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arXiv · 2511.09037

Sound impact of simple viscoelastic damping changes due to aging and the role of the double bentside on soundboard tension in a 1755 Dulcken harpsichord

Rolf Bader·Niko Plath·Patrick Kontopidis
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Abstract

The sound perception of wood aging is investigated on a Dulcken harpsichord of 1755 from the Museum of Applied Arts in Hamburg, Germany using a Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) model of the harpsichords soundboard. The soundboard thickness was measured on the instrument at 497 positions during strings being deattached and used in the model. Impulse responses were taken on the instrument to estimate the present internal damping by calculating the T60 decay time and used as a model input. By varying the internal damping from this measured damping as a logarithmic decrement, impulse responses were simulated at 52 string positions on both, the 8' and 4' bridge. To estimate the changed sound brightness due to changed internal damping, spectral centroids were calculated from the simulated impulse responses. A dependency of brightness change due to aging on string position was found, where the lower strings have higher brightness, as expected, while the higher strings have decreased brightness. This counterintuitive finding is caused by the frequency-dependent filter effect of changed damping. Future studies need to incorporate viscoelasticity to differentiate this effect further. Furthermore, the attachment of the 8' string to the outer instead of the inner wall, a characteristic feature of Dulcken harpsichords, is investigated using a 3D Finite-Element Method (FEM) model simulation of the whole instrument. No considerable changes on the soundboard tension were found compared to an attachment of the 8' strings to the inner wall, pointing to another reason for this special construction.

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Rolf Bader, Niko Plath, Patrick Kontopidis. 2025-11-12. Sound impact of simple viscoelastic damping changes due to aging and the role of the double bentside on soundboard tension in a 1755 Dulcken harpsichord. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09037

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