Unformatted text preview: Technical problems
6is choice, however, introduced a major technological challenge: with the range and tessitura required
by musical considerations, and the previously mentioned decisions about scale and stringing, the total
tension is almost 900 kg! While the initial framework design was made as robust as possible without
making the instrument unreasonably heavy, early experiments with the partially assembled structure
indicated that it would in fact not be capable of withstanding such a load without su8ering unacceptable
amounts of distortion. 6is initiated a complete re-examination of the issue, during which we realized that
the comparison to double-strung zithers is not really valid. 6ese instruments avoid this problem because
they are diatonic and not chromatic, and therefore have about half the number of strings per octave.
Hammered dulcimers achieve an even greater compassto-tension e>ciency by using the same string to
produce two di8erent notes. 6is is similar to Arnaut’s dulcemelos designs. Additionally, neither type of
instrument has a ‘gap’, which is always the weak point of any such strung keyboard design.32 In our case,
no imaginable solution, such as resorting to the shorter scale of a brass stringing, shortening the iron
scale and/or reducing the string diameters, would have su>ciently reduced the total tension to a safe
level unless carried to a degree which would have introduced unwanted acoustical and/or mechanical
complications. 6e only reasonable solution was to adopt a single-strung design, employing slightly
heavier strings than initially imagined for the double-strung approach. 6e total tension was thereby
reduced by about 40. ...
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