26 Jun
2000
26 Jun
'00
3:23 p.m.
On Mon, Jun 26, 2000 at 11:12:22AM -0500, Charles P. Hobbs (SoCalTip) wrote:
Some of the Allen Organs had a digital system where the
tone quality was
determined by an 80-column punched computer card, but these were high-end
instruments, not really home organs. (Someone over on the Electronic
Organ List hacked this system, and determined just how the cards were
supposed to be punched in order to produce a certain sound)
Neat! I remember a snazzy tuner that was around in the 80s which used
a punch card, that's cool that they were used to encode tone quality
too. The tuner had a little circle of LEDs which would appear to "roll"
in one direction or the other, depending on which way you needed to go.
And the punch card allowed non-equal temperaments, great for harpsichordists
who don't feel like doing mean tone the equal-beating way. I wish I
remembered what these things were called so I could look for one...
What would be *really* neat would be an automatic harpsichord tuner, with
some kind of slow high-torque motor to turn the tuning pins. But I'll bet
the debugging process would involve breaking a whole lot of strings!
John Wilson
D Bit