Well, from my experience last year w/ building a guitar for this event, i have an estimate that each string puts about 5 lbs of tension on the instrument. Of course, this is with standard guitar string tuning, where it's from E2-E4, not C2-C5. That higher range is going to have somewhat more tension. Furthermore, the tension would also depend on the type of string. Classical nylon would obviously create less strain than 80/20 bronze. I was using silk/steel, but i believe those tension estimates were for standard bronze. Probably not much difference between the two, anyway.ScienceOlympian wrote:Sorry for the extremely ridiculous question that I asked recently.
Well, I received my guitar (medium tension, 80/20 bronze) strings yesterday. I think that the strings' tension will break the PVC pipe on the harp.
I am going to drill holes onto the neck and the soundboard and tie knots in the holes to secure the strings in place, and I'm pretty sure that the tension of the strings will snap the column of the harp in half. Do you think that medium guitar strings tuned from C2-C5 will break a PVC harp? (Look at PVC Piper Harp. It is approximately 34 inches at the longest string's location (C2)
Should I just build another instrument and return the PVC? Or should I take the chance that the harp will not break and use the harp for the competition, which is in 3 weeks?
So, assuming you're doing a full chromatic scale, that's something like 5*12*3=180 pounds spread across the support.
With some engineering, you might be able to make it strong enough to keep it intact. If it doesn't, a change of material(and/or thickness of said material) should work.
