Big Reed Performance

[ttonon]

....Wheatstone also describes resonant chambers in his patents (no formula there, of course !).

Hi Gene,

 

The only resonant chambers, that I'm aware of, that are discussed in Wheatstone's patents relating to free reeds involve large pipes, which would be more convenient for reed organs and other, relatively large, console type instruments. Associating resonant chambers with reed mounting cavities in small, hand held instruments, however, is another issue. If you can confirm that Wheatstone has discussed the latter in patents, I would much appreciate it if you would supply the reference.

 

Best regards,

Tom

www.bluesbox.biz

[goran rahm]

Gene said "Goran, thanks for the comments and questions....well, this all may be semantics....I believe Wheatstone and Lachenal used resonant chambers because I've seen chambers in a variety of photos for concertinas under repair and their sizes correspond to the formulae Tom has given, with some slack for "the art of tuning"....Wheatstone also describes resonant chambers in his patents (no formula there, of course !)."

 

Goran now:

Gene, it is not semantics, I'm afraid you have fallen into two traps of misinterpretation:

1) Hearsay.... regarding the use of "tuned" or "resonance" chambers in Wheatstone's concertina

2) 'Overtheoretization'....regarding your estimation of the chamber measures

 

concerning 1)

You do say " "I believe"....I asked for your evidence of knowledge....

Wheatstones 1844 patent contains NO signs of intentions to "tune" the chambers

The chambers are in fact ALL running onto the central hole.The partitions of top note chambers appeared early and spread gradually to lower range reeds but the routine to provide all chambers with partitions after the death of CW and the reason being to improve the response.

Some time in the way of history the myth has developed that the reed chambers are "tuned".

 

concerning 2)

I'm afraid your belief above has mislead you to find the said (accidental) relations.

Being on the same track as you long ago I tried the same but it simply does not work out!

As I have said elsewhere this of course does not exclude possible occurrence of

accidental resonant frequences but likely being inaudible or at least not prominent enough to have any significance because IF they had significance the irregular relationsships to the progression of note frequences would make you expect them to cause disorder in the general tonal response over the note range.

You DO sometimes come across (suspected) such effects as 'wolf' sounds in some instruments....

To learn about it again I suggest lab studies using some kind of objective method and variating a test chamber for analysis of tonal effects.

BTW Prof J Cottingham has as far as I know done nothing of this kind but with accordions quite a lot of documented research has been made by Prof Gotthard Richter.

Goran