[Bell Historians] Stretch tuning

[Andrew Higson]

I've put the nominals for Pierhead and Evesham in the table below along with Tewkesbury for good measure and also the degree of sharpening in cents. Having done a bit of delving into Paul's notes it is clear that the intention was a 25 cent stretch in the octave, which continued upwards the more bells there were. (Bill - did you see the last posting I made?). A further confusion is the fact that Pierhead trebles are longer waisted than the standard profile bell and consequently have a different tonal character to them.

 

Bell No.

Tewkesbury

Cents

Evesham

Cents

Pierhead

Cents

Treble

1782

37

1673

19

1601.5

34

2

1584

34

1484

12

1425

35

3

1493

31

1394

4

1341

26

4

1327

27

1243

6

1190.5

19

5

1179

23

1106.5

4

1058

16

6

1112

21

1044

3

999

17

7

989

18

931

5

890

17

8

878

12

829

4

791

13

9

781

9

738.5

3

702.5

7

10

735.5

5

697.5

4

664

10

11

654

2

622

5

588

0

Tenor

582

0

552

0

524

0

 

 

I agree with Richard's observation about this tuning schedule, more so on higher numbers. "Octave" pairs 25 cents apart dodging together just grate to my ear. However, the tower acoustics play a large part in how pronounced that effect is.

 

Paul did some peals that were ¼ of a semitone sharp over the octave (Stanbridge, Beds for example), but rapidly decided that this was too much. The first peal to be done 1/8th sharp was Bengeo.

 

Andrew Higson

Taylors Eayre and Smith Ltd

The Bellfoundry

Freehold Street

Loughborough

LE11 1AR

Telephone: 01509 212241 Fax: 01509 263305 Registered in England No. 1352309

________________________________

From: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com [mailto:bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Bill Hibbert
Sent: 02 December 2007 09:57
To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Bell Historians] Stretch tuning

 

List members may recall Richard Offen's interesting description a while 
ago of the procedure used by Whitechapel up to the 1920s to tune strike 
notes against forks.

Does anyone have first-hand (or at least reliable) knowledge of how 
Taylors did their stretch tuning in the 1950s and 1960s? The procedure 
might give clues as to how they (i.e. Paul Taylor) decided how much to 
stretch a peal of bells.

Thanks,

Bill H

 

           
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