Re: Noises through pickups (rather gongs...)

[Allan Hoeltje <ahoeltje@best.com>]

Matthias Grob wrote:
> What did the old cat hear?

Probably the very low and the very high frequencies - he certainly does
not respond to normal hand claps and name calling!  ("Get off the table,
Chili, off, off!!" - nope, just doesn't work! :-)


lindsay@pavestone.com wrote:
> Yes, the tones are too low for the bowl to physically produce them.  If 
>you
> think about it, bass notes are pretty darn large airwaves and therefore
> require pretty darn large instruments to produce them.  At 20Hz, the
> wavelength is 56 feet long.  There's just no way a bowl 20" wide weighing
> eight pounds can move that much air with enough energy to produce the 
>tone.
> Imagine how much more difficult it is to move 56 feet of air than, say, a
> mere 2.47 feet for a 440Hz A note.

Something is making the sound.  It must be the combined energy of the
audible frequencies that move the 56 feet of air.  I tend to think of
the bell and the space around it as the whole instrument.  The bell acts
as the actuator and the space as the resonating chamber.


-Allan