Well, I now have all the strings in place, 49 pairs. No sign of trouble from the frame under this tension, so far... Of course, this is the minimum tension that I might want it to handle: I've started out tuned to "C", i.e., two whole steps below the max pitch ("E"). I have to decide if I really want to stick with this rather extreme under-tuning, or whether I want to move up to, say, at least "D". But I don't mind breaking-in the instrument on the low pitch, anyway. (Don't really like that word, "break"...)
You can see that I placed felt "bowties" at the hitching points of the strings. These are to mute the "Aliquot" effect, the (dissonant) ringing of the short ends of the strings, which are not supposed to be part of the "speaking length". I hope that this "bowtie" design will hold up over time. The rectangles of felt are stuffed in between the pairs of strings, kept in place by a hole in one end of the felt which goes over the hitch-pin. Thus, even as the felt ages and shrinks, there should still be excess pressure keeping material pressed against the strings. As opposed to the common technique of lacing a long ribbon over and under, through the strings: over time the loops of ribbon tend to sag away from the strings, leaving some un-muted.
(I haven't done anything (so far?) about the even-shorter lengths between the nut and the tuning pins. These aren't as close to some of the real notes, as the other segments were, and plus I'm more concerned about the segments that are in contact with the bridge and soundboard.)
Now I can start to get a sense of the overall tone that the instrument will have, the balance of the lows and the highs, etc.. I'd say, so far, that I love the tone of the basses and I'm very excited to use those tones, they are exactly what my music is wanting. The middle range is also excellent, very woody and cello-like, lots of resonance. I think I made the larger of the two sound holes, too large. I will have to experiment with different reducing baffles over it, before I build another one of these. The voicing of the "vowels" in the midrange, is too "open", I wanted more nasal. But it's acoustically impressive; I expected that nasalness would be easy to attain, but loud round resonance might be lacking, but it's almost the opposite.
The treble, however, does not please me that much, so far. Maybe it's just because the tuning is so far off, the noises are always off-pitch caterwauling horror-movie sounds. But even so, I can still tell that the bass and mid sound good. The treble is too fluty, too plain, too much sounding like the strings are too short and too thick. Maybe this is the area where there is a detrimental effect to the two-step under-tuning. Maybe it will improve when I can access these notes with a real keyboard, and when they have articulating dampers. But then again, maybe "treble that please me" will turn out to be an ongoing quest.
(Another of the many possibilities for why the treble doesn't satisfy, which I should certainly acknowledge, is that maybe this is a result -- the "cost" -- of having too thick, or too absorbent, of a soundboard. My Home Depot plywood soundboard seems to work amazingly well for the bass and midrange, but maybe the treble is where a thinner, solid-wood, soundboard would show its difference. Since others will surely speculate thus, let me do so as well! Has some acoustic basis... Or maybe a million things about the bracing, etc., etc....)
Now begins the long process of gradually bringing her into tune. Unsurprisingly, the tuning of the existing strings was sagging about a whole step per day, as I gradually added more strings over this past week. I expect and certainly hope to see this gradually stabilize, now that all the tension is applied. If not -- I can cover it with glass and it'll make a really unique coffee table!
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