Posted by Rick Denney on August 19, 2001 at 20:22:31:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Vibration, damping, and weight posted by js on August 19, 2001 at 12:42:54:
You'll find no disagreement from me, though there may be more tweaking in the horns of some of those players than you realize. Chuck Daellenbach showed me a few of the tweaks on his Yamaha, and I thought I remembered something about Roger Bobo's 621 being somewhat modified.
Gene Pokorny will sound wonderful on whatever he plays, he being able to overcome many faults. Even so, the instruments he plays are some of the most revered instruments in the business--the archetypes that others tweak their instruments to try to simulate. But the big 6/4 horns are not the sorts of instruments that have attracted the interest in adding weight. The instruments that, according to many reports, seem to benefit from the extra weight are the rotary tubas that perhaps tend to the bright in the first place, such as the Miraphone. Maybe the greatest players (always with exceptions, of course) aren't interested in adding weight to such instruments because they don't play them in the first place. Warren Deck certainly did not settle for any horn off the shelf--he is known for fiddling with his tubas and trying things. And there's a certain music store owner in Memphis who is still searching for the perfect CC, if I recall.
But that is not my concern. I'm dealing with simple facts: 1.) Credible professionals report a difference from these modifications, 2.) the mods should affect the physics of the instrument in some measure, though not necessarily in significant or helpful measure, and 3.) if the difference is real, then there must be a physical explanation.
If there is no plausible physical explanation, then perhaps we can then rightly be even more skeptical. But if there is a plausible physical explanation, and if we begin to understand it, we might even get to the point where we understand why some instruments benefit from it and others don't, or why it has no effect for one player and a big effect for another, or even why we perceive a difference when there is no hearable difference.
But there's no harm in trying to understand these things. At least if we all understand a common body of what is already known (but not known to most musicians), we can immediately filter out the most obvious myths. The worst sins with such contraptions is when people DON'T understand them. Then, they are subject to all sorts of pseudo-scientific claptrap from the snake oil salesmen.
Rick "knowledge is power" Denney