Re: Re: Dents


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Posted by Rick Denney on August 26, 2003 at 18:56:55:

In Reply to: Re: Dents posted by Wade on August 25, 2003 at 23:52:22:

Just to add to what you say, bronze, the various brass alloys, and copper have about the same strength and stiffness, depending on how they are worked. If properly worked, copper is plenty strong, but it turns green. Brass looks better, and that's why it's more popular. I've seen some of the old Besson prototypes that had copper valve tubing that was then silver-plated to make it look uniform with the brass outer branches.

Nickel-silver is stronger than brass (around 23,000 psi for annealed nickel silver versus 17,000 for brass), but it is only slightly stiffer (18 ksi vs. 15 ksi). Remember that stiffness influences resonance and not strength, unless bring stronger means it is made thinner. Thus, I can't imagine why a nickel-silver tuba would sound different than a brass tuba, unless the thickness of the material is different. The tubas on which you based that conclusion likely had other differences than just the metal.

Working the metal changes its strength, but it doesn't change its inherent stiffness.

Also, all brasses, bronze, and nickel-silver have similar density (mass per unit volume).

Rick "unable to make the connection between work-hardening and sound" Denney


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