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The piano-tone production system is
really very complex and much still remains
to be learned. My few remarks cover only
a small part of this generally unknown area.
Piano designing and building is hardly an
exact science, insofar as tone production is
concerned, and this is a challenging field of
research.
B. F. MIESSNER,
Van Beuren Road, RFD 2,
Morristown, N . J.
SIR:
Mr. Preisman's discussion of the practice
of mistuning the octaves at the extreme
ends of a piano in accordance with
the "inharmonicity" of its overtones was
read with great interest. In my opinion,
tl:is practice is ill-advised. Its theoretical
usage seems to be dictated by the Pythagorean
comma, a disparity existing between
the pitch of octave unisons produced
by a circle of perfect fifths, and those resulting
from harmonics. However, the beats
between the octaves of a piano "stretched"
in this fashion are much more annoying to
me than the "dead and lifeless" sound of a
piano in which the octaves are precisely in
tune. I am sure that a piano with octaves
tuned to the interval 'of a diminished ninth
would sound quite brilliant, but not necessarily
pleasant. After all, equal temperament
is in itself a radical distortion of natural
harmonic relationships, so why compound
the felony by further tampering? There is
a possible parallel here between people who
prefer "Stretched" pianos and people who
like their reproducing equipment to sound
spectacular rather than natural.
Aside from these small matters, I have
found Mr. Preisman's articles valuable and
informative especially with their ' emphasis
of the musical element which all too often
tends to lose itself in this business. Incidentally,
the Conn tuning device is called a
Strobocon, and someone seems ' to have recatalogued
Chopin's Etude Op. 25 as Op.
75 in the footnote on page 68.
Missing Decimals
D AVID
HANCOCK,
4 West 93rd St.,
New York 25, N. Y.
SIR:
The article titled "Three-Element Bass
Control" in the October issue appeared to be
the best one I have ever seen. It is too bad
that I can't build this control. You left
off the decimal points and I can't tell if
one resistor or another is required. for
example, what is 01 or 047 or 005? Just
where is the decimal point? And why does
such a little thing get me so riled up I
make all sorts of errors in typing this
letter to YOll ? (He did, too. ED.)
H. A. ROLLINS,
2328 Proctor,
Garland, Texas.
(We're trltly sorry for this cond·ition,
which has been reported by many readers.
It appears that the photoengraving for the
schematic was overetched, and the periods
were all eaten off. However, becaltse the
circuit 1IJaS of so mu.ch interest to readers,
we remade the Cttt and a m01'e legible schematic
may be found on page 70. ED.)
10 AUDIO ENGINEERING • DECEMBER, 1953