After having strung up, I installed the Tremel No (again), and started the endless process of setting up. After many, many iterations, I think I have the relief and action right, and the intonation is almost ok. I was helped in the latter by my new toy, the Turbo Tuner ST-200, a genuine strobe tuner. What this means exactly is a bit unclear to me, but it seems to be a much smarter sort of tuner than the usual. When one hits a string, it vibrates at its fundamental frequency, and all integer multiples of that frequency. For example, hitting the open A string, which is A2 (110Hz), results in some mixture of 110, 220, 440, 880, ... vibrations. The "amount" of each of these determines the tonal characteristics of the sound that's heard. Or something like that. Anyhow, the tuner knows this and, presumably after determining the fundamental frequency (which must be the closest "real" note to the loudest), it must compare that frequency, and all others it finds by doing an FFT to integer multiples of the fundamental frequency and display these differences in a groovy circular display. It takes some getting used to, but it's fun. I bought this one instead of the polytune thinking it was "cooler". It is, but the polytune may be better to use on stage, not that I'm on stage that much :-)
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Shimming
I decided to take another shot at shimming (sounds like the "attempted to tempt her with Tempters" commercial). I found the comments on this site to be helpful. This time I obsessively measured the thickness of every piece of paper I could find and finally settled on a method in which I started with a piece of printer paper the size of the neck pocket and then laid on layers of painter's tape so that I got a gradual slope from the width of the paper (I've forgotten what it is) to around 0.75m, which is what that NYHRC card was. I punched holes with a hole punch, then re-punched when it turned out I'd screwed up, installed it, and it seems ... no different, but certainly not worse. In a fit of sentimentality, I wrote my name and the date on the shim. Perhaps one of my kids will disassemble it in 30 years and be inspired to heave a wistful sigh in memory of me. Just the sort mawkish sentimentality which I claim to despise, but there you have it.
After having strung up, I installed the Tremel No (again), and started the endless process of setting up. After many, many iterations, I think I have the relief and action right, and the intonation is almost ok. I was helped in the latter by my new toy, the Turbo Tuner ST-200, a genuine strobe tuner. What this means exactly is a bit unclear to me, but it seems to be a much smarter sort of tuner than the usual. When one hits a string, it vibrates at its fundamental frequency, and all integer multiples of that frequency. For example, hitting the open A string, which is A2 (110Hz), results in some mixture of 110, 220, 440, 880, ... vibrations. The "amount" of each of these determines the tonal characteristics of the sound that's heard. Or something like that. Anyhow, the tuner knows this and, presumably after determining the fundamental frequency (which must be the closest "real" note to the loudest), it must compare that frequency, and all others it finds by doing an FFT to integer multiples of the fundamental frequency and display these differences in a groovy circular display. It takes some getting used to, but it's fun. I bought this one instead of the polytune thinking it was "cooler". It is, but the polytune may be better to use on stage, not that I'm on stage that much :-)
After having strung up, I installed the Tremel No (again), and started the endless process of setting up. After many, many iterations, I think I have the relief and action right, and the intonation is almost ok. I was helped in the latter by my new toy, the Turbo Tuner ST-200, a genuine strobe tuner. What this means exactly is a bit unclear to me, but it seems to be a much smarter sort of tuner than the usual. When one hits a string, it vibrates at its fundamental frequency, and all integer multiples of that frequency. For example, hitting the open A string, which is A2 (110Hz), results in some mixture of 110, 220, 440, 880, ... vibrations. The "amount" of each of these determines the tonal characteristics of the sound that's heard. Or something like that. Anyhow, the tuner knows this and, presumably after determining the fundamental frequency (which must be the closest "real" note to the loudest), it must compare that frequency, and all others it finds by doing an FFT to integer multiples of the fundamental frequency and display these differences in a groovy circular display. It takes some getting used to, but it's fun. I bought this one instead of the polytune thinking it was "cooler". It is, but the polytune may be better to use on stage, not that I'm on stage that much :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment