ASA 125th Meeting Ottawa 1993 May

4pMU4. The monopole cello.

Paul S. Veneklasen

Paul S. Veneklasen Res. Found., 1711 16th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404

The conventional cello is one of the orchestral instruments whose sound is usually poorly projected from an orchestra, especially in its lower register. One of several reasons for this, in common with others of the string family, is that the foot of the bridge is connected to both top plate and back by a sound post constraining these points to vibrate in phase. As a result, in the lower frequency range, the instrument radiates as a bi-polar sound source. If the top plate and back can be coupled so as to vibrate in apposing phase, then the instrument would radiate as a mono-pole source with a potential substantial increase in sound output. This paper describes an exploratory attempt to induce such operation.