Virzi inquiry - Models offered? Tonal effect?

[lowtone2]

432 Hz was championed by Virzi for a very short period when composers in Europe were beginning to talk of moving to a standard pitch. It was certainly not a standard that Gibson ever used, and the nazis did not demand 440 because it was unnatural. These are nothing but wild theories, and if you believe them, watch out for the nano-transmitter in your covid vaccine.

[Hendrik Ahrend]

With a standard Snark tuner, how does one dial in a 432?

I'd suggest not to be all too enthusiastic about A432. My personal 1924 F5 sounds just fine on either A440 or 432. As our highly respected MC member Roger Siminoff suggests (without giving a source, though), we may well assume that Mr. Loar was fond of the 432 Hz idea, which is also called "scientific pitch" (aka philosophical pitch, Sauveur pitch or Verdi tuning). It is based on middle C (C4) being set to 256 Hz rather than 261.62 Hz. Since 256 is a power of 2, only octaves (factor 2:1) and, in just tuning, higher-pitched perfect fifths (factor 3:2) of the scientific pitch standard will have a frequency of a convenient integer value. With a Verdi pitch standard of A4 = 432 Hz = 24 × 33, in just tuning all octaves (factor 2), perfect fourths (factor 4:3) and fifths (factor 3:2) will have pitch frequencies of integer numbers, but not the major thirds (factor 5:4) nor major sixths (factor 5:3) which have a prime factor 5 in their ratios. However scientific tuning - as in our beloved mandolins - implies an equal temperament tuning where the frequency ratio between each half tone in the scale is the same, being the 12th root of 2 (a factor of 1.059463), which is not a rational number: therefore in scientific pitch only the octaves of C have a frequency of a whole number in hertz.

The 1923 Gibson Handbook suggests a pitch that was considered the international standard (without further stating, which pitch is actually meant – and there was no standard). Loar may have favored A432, but there is no way of telling that "his" master Models were actually tuned in A432 in daily combat, as the pitch prior to the 1939 London conference was all over the place, eben within the USA. The 1939 A440 decision was more or less a compromise between two popular extremes c. A415 (chamber pitch) on the one and c. A468 (choir pitch) on the other hand.

C256 being a power of 2 certainly doesn't make A432 a more valid or even more natural pitch than others. It reminds me of the obsession with the 19th. century idea of the Golden Section, which - in a similar manner as scientific pitch - is part of the then popular idea of rationalism, that is explaining the world mathematically. We haven't touched upon those many temperaments of historical instruments, yet.

[lowtone2]

Excuse me, Verdi, not Vrzi.