looking for arbiter advanced tuning drums patent

I dunno if anyone knew of these drums but they were designed in such a way that only one tension rod was used to tune the drum heads. I have been trying to locate the patent for these as I am curious as to how they were designed. I have only seen pictures and the drums are no longer made.

http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/WNAMM98/Arbiter/at.html

Picture shows a exploded view of the drum


http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/autotune/arbiter_tuning.html

Web site looks like there still hanging in there...

There is a more recent system, using a cable and levers that reportedly works OK(?). I haven't personally tested how well the drum clear (matching of lugs) tracks as all the lugs are adjusted flat or sharp, but for fast note tuning on the fly, it will be faster.

You still need to clear the drumhead like a regular drum, so these systems simplify "changing" general note tuning but the drum head lugs still needs some individual attention to sound best.

http://www.drumtech.com/

http://www.drummerconnection.com/content/robot-guitars-how-about-robot-drums%3F

Note: sorry about the shameless plug for that electronic tuner skip past it to see a video about the one tweak DTS tuning system. I don't know how to link to just the DTS discussion.

JR

PS: I bought one of the cheap motorized guitar tuners and took it apart, pretty simple, but guitars are much easier to tune.

I am familiar with the more new system and it doesn't work as well as the
arbiter ever did. I am trying to find the patent from free patents online and can't seem to locate it.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=6aIwAAAAEBAJ&dq=Arbiter+drum



There is a lot of art trying to do this, I didn't know that the Arbiter was any better than the others,, but have fun... Drums are wonderfully complex, but that is good and bad. Don't throw away your tuning key.


JR

I have no intention to doing so. I just wish to do more study thats all.

If you use something like Google patents... They have hot links to citations and references in every patent.

The citations are other older patents or art the inventor thinks is related. The references are other inventors that cited the current patent in their later applications.

This will link you around to a lot of related art. (some of the links weren't working in google today, but if the link is broken you can just paste in the pat # in search area).

Another thing you can do is look at all the patents in that general reference category but they may range a bit far afield.. as it is you will find congas and toy cardboard drums in the related art.

I recall decades ago actually going to Arlington, VA and doing a patent search by looking through the "shoes" (drawers) full of paper patents.

note: membranophone is the fancy word for drum.
---------

As you probably know drums are kind of messy from a strict physics standpoint. The laws of physics are fine, just the drums are not very round, rigid, regular...

On paper everything works...until you try it.

:roll:

JR

google patents? such a thing exists. cool man

I try there