Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I pulled the new strings out of their immaculate packaging last night, and strung up my cello. The Larsens have what appears to be an actual sealing wax seal on their envelopes, which is delightful and goofy at the same time.
No problems getting the strings set up, although the Spirocore C was surprisingly unwilling to seat in the hole drilled for the purpose through the peg. It was perhaps too springy, and not grippy enough, so it kept sliding out as I turned the peg.
I then played about half an hour of scales, arpeggios, and some of the music from Chancellor.
The Larsen A and D are slightly more mellow sounding than the two-year-old Jargars, but are markedly less prone to the horrible-sounding false tone I would occasionally get on an open string. They seem to project very slightly less, although I'd want to confirm that with someone else. I have found in the past that my experience of the cello's sound is not the same as what you hear sitting a few feet away.
The Spirocore strings do definitely have a metallic undertone to them, as the internet had suggested they would. However, as long as the bow is putting energy into the string, it sounds pretty good, and not particularly objectionable. Once the bow is off the string, and it's just ringing, it's got a tack-piano tone to it, although it's not the predominant sound.
I found that the open G (I have the silver G, and the tungsten C) speaks more easily than the Jargar G did. It's not a huge change, but is definitely noticeable. The C string produces a most unpleasant tone when playing anywhere above G, but I basically never play there, so it's not a big deal. I also expect that habit to mellow out with age, along with losing the metallic undertone. The first position up to G sounds good.
Interestingly, the wolf moved dramatically with the new strings. With the Jargar strings, it was about B or B♭ on the G string; surprisingly low, but that's where I kept running into it. I tuned my New Harmony (probably 7g, but not sure) eliminator accordingly. With the new strings, the wolf appears at F on the D string, a much more common location from what I can tell. Reset the New Harmony weight accordingly, and it seems to be gone. However, the wolf was never very present on the F with the new strings, and I only occasionally hit it, particularly when a bit flat. With the old strings, when I hit the wolf, it was quite noticeable.
I can't actually explain the change in wolf location: the wolf is a characteristic of the resonant frequency of the cello's body, and although tension could shift the resonant frequency, I'm pretty sure it can't shift it that much. The change from B♭ to F is almost exactly a meter of wavelength (from 296.03 cm to 197.58 cm, according to this page). The cello's body is around 76 cm long. Neither of the notes is anywhere near an even multiple of that number, though examining longest dimension as related to resonant frequency is almost criminally simplistic, I'm sure.
Regardless of wolf mysteries, I was sufficiently pleased with the sound of the new strings that I abandoned my initial plan to replace them with the old Jargars (as being a well-known quantity) for the next performance of Chancellor.
I'll report back for my ~1.3 readers who are interested in this experience. I expect to have string stretch shenanigans to deal with, which will probably be the only thing that will make me reconsider swapping back to the old strings for performance.
Posted at 15:14 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater