[Bell Historians] Major third bells

[Benjamin Kipling]

Please excuse typos, smelling mistrakes etc., as I've only just got back from the pub.

>"I was looking at the tuning of the old tenor at Kidderminster for some 
>other purposes and happened to notice that it had a major tierce: 
>821.5 cents below the nominal or 378.5 cents above the strike - 
>sharper than the tierce of the major third bell in Taylor's museum. 
>The bell, of course, was Mears 1857 and I assume had no trace of a 
>bulge in the waist. (Mind you, the rest of the partials were pretty 
>chaotic!) Accident or design?"

Almost certainly accident.  The Tierce is more heavily dependent on the Hum than it is on the profile - with the exception of Victorian Warner bells (those which remain in one piece, before anyone else comments), bells with very sharp Hums also tend to have sharp Tierces.  When I analysed it, I seem to remember that the Hum of the old Kidderminster Tenor was in the vicinity of a flat sixth.  For a given Hum, Nominal and profile, the Tierce will also vary slightly with the Quint - a flatter Quint means the high waist will be thinner and the low waist will be thicker, giving a sharper Tierce.

>I think the tenor at the Spurriergate Centre in York has a tierce pretty
>close to a major third - the bell is by Thomas Innocent, 1466. Taylor's
>tuned the bells in 1986, so they may be able to confirm or refute this - I
>don't have tonal analysis figures for the bells.

Many ancient bells have sharper Tierces than one would expect for the Hums, as the soundbows are often quite dumpy, as with early larger G&J bells.

Benjamin Kipling