[Harp-L] Comb material

[Snaruhn@xxxxxxx]

Hi, Vern,

had you ever thought that the materials debate is an evergreen
like the FAQ for the best harp?

We were right when we named the group thinking the
material of the comb had a sound influence "believers". 

A  person who trusts in God is normally called a believer same 
as a nihilist who asserts that  the universe was created from
nothing. Insofar there´s no argument to convince a "comb believer"
that the shape makes the music.    

Elisabeth writes: 

< How do YOU know with absolute certainty that what I or the  person sitting 
< next to you on the subway/at a concert hears isn't  completely different 
from 
< what you hear?  How can any person judge  what one person hears vis-a-vis 
< another?  That's where an  audiologist would come in...but even then, their 
testing 
< is done with  gauges and machines.  No one knows exactly what  another 
person 
< hears. Just one of those facts of life. >
 
Well, that isn´t the point here. Nobody of the "scepticists" has ever said
that all people must have the same accoustical perception. The whole debate 
was initiated by the assertion that the material of the comb is sound
influencing. Why not the material of the screws, reeds, reedplates or
covers?

Apropos, covers. When Vern prepared his materials seminar at SPAH 97
I said to him that he shouldn´t demonstrate only combs off different 
materials. Some even asserted that different cover materials are of
importance too. So, I made Vern a CX 12 with a brass shell exactly 
in the size of the the plastic original.

Before John Walden started the blind test on always the same
harp brand, besides the material of the comb, all existing harps
(including the plastic & brass CX 12) had been showed and played

Now comes the point. When it came to the two CX 12, John played
my brass model in a row. However, the majority of the SPAH audience           
 
pretended of having heard the plastic and brass model alternately.

And that´s exactly what Vern wrote: 
 
< None of the more than 30 SPAH attendees present did better than 
> random guessing. >
    
Finally, Harpie wants to give a comment to what Rick Dempster said:

< Somebody once said that the person that wrote Shakespeare's plays and
< sonnets was not William Shakespeare, but another person with the same
< name. RD

Hi, Rick, what do you think of the following analogy?

It was not Aolf Hitler who started WW II but a person named Aolf Hitler.

OK, I promise not to say a further word to the subject because a harp
has no comb but only a part Shakespeare thought to be a comb.

Siegfried