Motion of the cello bridge


Type
Article
Change log
Authors
Zhang, A 
Stoppani, G 
Abstract

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the motion of the bridge of a cello, in the frequency range up to 2 kHz. Vibration measurements were carried out on three different cellos, and the results used to determine the position of the Instantaneous Centre of rotation of the bridge, treated as a rigid body. The assumption of rigid body rotation is shown to give a good approximation up to at least 1 kHz. The instantaneous centre moves from the sound-post side of the bridge at the lowest frequencies towards the bass-bar side at higher frequencies, remaining close to the surface of the top plate of the instrument. The trajectory as a function of frequency sheds light on the response of the cello in response to excitation by bowing the different strings. The correlation between the motion at the four string notches and directly measured transfer functions at these four notches is examined and verified for some important low-frequency body resonances.

Description
Keywords
0299 Other Physical Sciences
Journal Title
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0001-4966
1520-8524
Volume Title
140
Publisher
AIP Publishing
Sponsorship
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Grant No. 11504246.