Re: Re: Vibration, damping, and weight


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TubeNet BBS ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by Rick Denney on August 19, 2001 at 00:41:35:

In Reply to: Re: Vibration, damping, and weight posted by js on August 17, 2001 at 19:42:11:

I'm a mediocre player and only a bit better listener. I'm quite sure that the effects of these things are far smaller than the improvements I could make with more talent, and more and better practice. There is a reason I haven't tried to characterize the magnitude of these effects: I don't what they are.

What I do know is this: Subjective tests have been done. And while they are still anecdotal, I'm not prepared to dismiss them out of hand. When a player of known ability comes on here and talks about something like, say, Monsterweights making a glow-in-the-dark difference, I may be skeptical, but I'm no more qualified to call it bunk than I am to call it golden. I'm not prepared to believe that Jay Bertolet is deluding himself that the changes he made to his 601 weren't noticeable or effective, or that Don Harry, who suggested those changes, is also deluding himself. Making that assumption would be extremely presumptuous of me, even more presumptuous than taking their experiences for granted (or worse, extrapolating them).

My attempt is to try to take the effects people describe and run the through the imperfect filter of what little I know of physics and materials, to see if they can be explained. If I can't think of a way to explain them, and say so, the someone who knows the physics better will see my gap and correct me, and we'll all know more. That's the objective. I'm no physicist, but I suspect I've had a bit more of that sort of training than most of the folks on this list with music in their academic background. But there are technical people around here with real knowledge of various aspects who will be motivated to bestow that understanding on us if I give them a clear target to shoot at.

As to how much difference it makes, I wouldn't be too doubtful. Tubas are a dynamic balance between damping and resonance, where a tiny amount of energy is harnessed super-efficiently (through resonance) to produce a large effect. In such a system, any subtle influence could nudge that balance one way or the other, and because the effect is much larger than the input, that small influence of the input can be more pronounced in the resulting effect.

I saw Scott Mendoker play test a couple of Conn 5xJ's at Dillon Music. He picked one up, played it for about 30 seconds, and said, "Yup, this is like this." He picked another one up, and after the same 30-second test, said "This one is like that" and described in detail how differently it responded. I could not tell the difference from my side of the room. But I would not in my wildest dreams say that he couldn't.

Rick "who would be happy if people would just use the terms correctly" Denney


Follow Ups: