Talk:C. G. Conn

Assessment
I assessed this as a mid-importance article for the Wikiproject Musical Instruments, for being an article on a musical instrument manufacture. I rated it C class because it has a fair amount of content, organized into sections, but needs more references (especially inline references) to let people know where information came from. the pictures for this are excellent. If this were properly referenced, it could probably be a B class. If you improve it and want reassessment or need help or have questions, please drop me a line. Jacqke (talk) 22:33, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Untitled
I came across this page: Conn-Selmer. Are these pages talking about the same company?

Yes and no. Conn-Selmer is a recent conglomeration/parent company formed by merging C.G. Conn with The Selmer Company. Both of these own/manage other instrument manufacturers and are in turn owned by Steinway Musical Instruments, which (obviously) has some association with Steinway Pianos. I noticed the same thing a while ago, and I left it as is because I figured with all the different manufacturers listed on the Conn-Selmer page, most of them could have pretty comprehensive articles written about them, so there was no point doing any kind of merge/redirect thing. Expanding this article is on my "get around to it sooner or later" list, although of course you're welcome to do it. Soundguy99 06:41, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

=Split the article?=

Is anyone currently watching this page? If so, I think we should seperate this article into two. One for C. G. Conn the man and one for the company itself. Just checking. Anthony 02:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, Conn deserves his own article, with his bio and appropriate categories. Some of his basic info can stay in this article, as it applies to the origin and development of the company. Mingusboodle (talk) 02:35, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I am from Elkhart, Indiana and was unaware that C.J. Conn recieved the metal of honor as his biography on wikipedia says. It's not cross referenced with this wiki article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Medal_of_Honor_recipients_for_the_American_Civil_War:_A-L —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.178.191.138 (talk) 17:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like the Charles G. Conn article was created in 2007. I moved quite a bit of very lengthy and detailed portions of the article pertaining to Charles G. Conn over to the article about the person, and retained a far more condensed and simplified version of information relevant to the company's history here in this article. I hope everyone agrees. synthfiend (talk) 22:46, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

=Conn Strobotuner=

This was probably the original stroboscopic musical instrument tuner. Much of the description of Peterson strobe tuners applies. I'm surprised to see no mention of it! For a reference, look up a book by Richard H. Dorf about electronic musical instruments, published roughly 1950 or so. It was a vacuum-tube (valve) device.

The original Strobotuner had an eletronically-sustained tuning fork oscillator; its output was amplified to drive a synchronous motor, which rotated all 12 strobe discs via gearing that had a quite-small theoretical error, relative to exact equal temperament. To minimize cumulative error, two different ratios were used, more or less in alternation (More teeth, then fewer teeth, etc.). Numbers of teeth were possibly 84:89 and roughly 110 teeth for the other set. The panel cutouts were circular sectors, probably 90 degrees, and iirc were arranged like one octave of a keyboard -- "black-key" notes were positioned above "diatonics", to reduce width.

The fork was physically large; its tines were (fairly sure ) several inches long (think of Rudolph Koenig's tuning-fork clock, in Google Books versions of Ganot's Physics, iirc). Sliding weights varied its frequency slightly. A knob and a scale of cents offset (perhaps +/- 50 cents?) moved the weights.

IIrc, it had its own microphone. Audio was amplified and fed to what must have been a step-up transformer. The transformer's secondary operated a neon-filled (U?) tube that extended across all 12 discs, placed behind them, of course. I don't think there was DC bias to keep it close to glowing.

Afaik, it did not need a lot of maintenance; the comments about multi-dial strobe tuners that say they need a lot of maintenance look quite strange. I really doubt that Peterson design engineers would create such devices. One motor per dial is a great luxury, but timing motors have had about a century of development (see Warren Telechron, and Hurst, among others).

The tuning fork's alloy had a zero thermoelastic coefficient, perhaps made by Carpenter Steel. That attribute must have made its frequency essentially unaffected by temperature. Unfortunately, the supply of that alloy was used up, and it was made a ton at a time; Conn didn't afford a ton of it! Afaik, this was the demise of the Stroboconn. Nevertheless, almost countless musical instrument repairmen and makers used and depended on them.

Sorry not to have better references, but I do want to document this device; it was remarkable (and trustworthy, too, afaik!).

00:43, 23 September 2012 (UTC)