The Ekdahl FAR - Calibrations

Automatic calibration

The bowing motor speed, bowing pressure and mute all offer automatic calibration. As machines are not infallable and programmers certainly are not (meaning me as of this writing), the automatic calibrations may sometimes not do a great job and may have to be run two or more times in order to properly assess what's going on. Furthermore you have to do the calibrations in the proper order or it will not work.

The first calibration that should be done is the bowing motor speed calibration this measures the minimum and maximum speed of the motor. This is done at assembly and should in theory only have to be done again if you change the bow motor voltage or for some reason replace the motor. If you are using a bowing wheel that puts an abnormal strain on the bowing motor you may also have to do this.

The second calibration is the bow pressure calibration and this should be done any time you change the string, bowing wheel or change the physical position of the pressure motor. This calibration tries to gage the min and max pressure that should be used and will set the rest position to a preset value below the min position. This calibration uses the min and max position of the motor for its testing.

The third cailbration is the mute calibration, this needs to be performed when the position of the mute motor has changed, a string with a different thickness has been put on the instrument, or the bridge heights have changed. The mute calibration works by playing the fundamental of the instrument and digitally analyzing the sound of the pickup while moving the mute into different positions. Therefore the instrument must have gone through the pressure calibration and it should be reasonably in tune, if this is not the case you will most likely get garbage values.