[Bell Historians] G&J - and Port Sunlight - again

[Andrew Aspland]

As a non-expert in this field, (and in many others!), these figures
do not mean a huge amount to me. I think that doubling the
frequency raises a note by exactly an octave. My maths tells me that
the treble is 11cps more than twice the frequency of the tenor in
terms of the Hum. In layperson's terms please, is this significant?
Could it be detected by the average ringer?

What you need to do is throw all those figures into Bill Hibbert's
"Analysis" spreadsheet. This will give you figures in cents (100ths of a
semitone). In a modern bell the hum should be two octaves below the nominal
i.e. 2400 cents, the prime is 1200 cents below, the tierce is 900 cents
below for a minor third bell and 800 below for a major third bell, the quint
500 below, super quint 700 above and the super octave 1200 above.

With Bill's spreadsheet you can try for a good fit to various temperaments
but you can also look for consistency across the ring - they may not be
modern sounding but at least are they all the same style or have a
progression through the ring?

I've had a go and can tell you that they have seventh hums getting sharper
towards the treble, the primes are about right at the back end but get much
flatter towards the trebles - so the "octave" gap between the treble's hum
and prime is nearer a fifth than an octave! The tierces are around the 840
mark - but this sort of doesn't matter too much and the quints are all
pretty sharp and variable but quints are fairly quiet.

Essentially there are very few of the harmonics which fit into a harmonic
progression and therefore they don't reinforce each other either in each
bell or in your "ear" so I suspect your bells tend to go CLUNK.

Please don't let the average ringer be the benchmark for judging bells - by
definition we would end up with mediocrity.

Andrew