Piano bass strings with reduced inharmonicity: theory and experiments

Abstract

In modern straight pianos and half-grand pianos the inharmonicity due to the bending stiffness of the strings makes the sound of lower notes of poor quality. The question of whether this can be corrected has been addressed in a previous paper and it was shown on the basis of numerical simulations that this might be possible. In the present paper we show using analytical models that fixing a single mass near the end of the string is a simple and efficient solution. Indeed, the experiments show that theoretical predictions are relevant. So, in practice, on the basis of a simple formula involving the inharmonicity coefficient, it is easy to deduce the position of a given mass in order to reduce significantly the inharmonicity of the bass strings.