How important are the materials from which string instruments are made?
) * Of couse, everyone wants to know: even if the differences were small, which one did best? Ranked on a scale of 1 to 5, the solid silver did ‘best’ and the 9 carat gold did ‘worst’ . However, if one rates the instruments by subtracting the number of ‘don’t like it’ from the number of ‘like it’, the 9 carat gold did best and the solid silver did worst. This apparently paradoxical result is due to the statistical variations in very similar rankings. Widholm, G., Linortner, R., Kausel, W. and Bertsch, M. (2001) “Silver, gold, platinum–and the sound of the flute” Proc. International Symposium on Musical Acoustics, Perugia. D.Bonsi, D.Gonzalez, D.Stanzial, eds, pp 277-280. In principle, one could imagine that the acoustic waves in the bore could couple to mechanical modes in the walls of the instrument. However, nearly all wind instruments have circular cross sections (exceptions include square cross-section organ pipes) and this makes such coupling very much weaker, because small chang
