A Terminating Resonator

Suppose a guitar bridge couples an ideal vibrating string to a single resonance, as depicted schematically in Fig.9.5. This is often an accurate model of an acoustic bridge impedance in a narrow frequency range, especially at low frequencies where the resonances are well separated. Then, as developed in Chapter 7, the driving-point impedance seen by the string at the bridge is

That is, the driving-point impedance is the series combination of a mass , spring , and dashpot (§7.2). More general bridge impedances can be modeled as a sum of such terms. Since the bridge is passive, is positive real (§C.11.2).

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About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.