UK Registered Charity Number: 1154107

Conservation by Re-use

Helping churches acquire surplus and/or redundant bells to be hung for

English-style full-circle bell-ringing.

Sound of Bells – Tonal Analysis Report continued

Only one bell could be described as very poor sounding – the 7th bell. Its very sharp Prime gave the impression it was cracked!  

Also particularly noticeable was the Simpson tuned 6th bell. Although a fine bell, its tonal characteristics contrasted sharply with the rest of the ring.

The same ring of bells after slight re-tuning is shown above right. The most important partial, the Nominal is now a flat line at a Y-axis error of 0 cents, which means each individual bell has the correct Strike Note. To all intents and purposes the Quint partial can be ignored as its low sound level is masked by the other partials. The Prime partial is flat and the errors in the Tierce and Hum partials have been greatly reduced. Although not a perfect sounding peal of bells, their tonal qualities have been much enhanced by slight re-tuning. The most remarkable transformation is with the 7th bell where very slight re-tuning in the crown turned it into an almost perfect True Harmonic tuned bell.

So with skilful re-tuning a mediocre sounding ring can often be improved. It does however depend on the quality of the individual bells. Sometimes a bell cannot be improved and this will be the subject of future web pages.