| CAST BELLS - Art Casting |
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PACCARD Carillon bells back to main menu
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PACCARD, synonym of musical excellence ... |
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With two centuries behind them and a record of 120,000 bells, the Paccard Bell Foundry to become the world’s number one in carillon bells. Such renown is not the fruit of chance. It rests on three fundamental characteristics: the quality of the bell profile, the choice of metals and precision tuning. The Profil The drawing of the profile is very important, on which all other characteristics of the future bell will depend. In particular: the size, the weight and the note. Every founder has his own profile, which guarantees the quality of tone of the instrument and means that a founder can recognize his bells simply by listening to their ring. So, as a pianist will dream of a Steinway or of a Fazoli, a saxophoniste of a Selmer, a violinist of a Stradivarius, so bell lovers dream of a Paccard bell... |
The profile of each of our bells is studied to give the best musical performance. Thus, despite a sound that is distinct to the Paccard Bell Foundry, each bell is totally unique. The quality of metal Our bells are in bronze or bell bronze- a noble copper and tin alloy. The quality of the metal not only resides in the respective proportions of copper (76%) and tin (24%) but also in the absence of impurities. At the Paccard Bell Foundry, we guarantee less than 1% impurities in our bronze bells ! Another aspect to take into account is metal work, in other words the different stages executed during the fusion of metal, before the casting.
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Indeed, different chemical treatments aiming to purify the fusing metals, eliminating oxides as well as temperature checks are carried out. Finally, a sample of the metal is taken in order to verify the quality of the bronze, one last time before casting. The precision of the tuning
The bell is a real musical instrument. In vibration, you can hear its main- called Fundamental note and its five secondary notes called Harmonics: the Hum, the Prime, the Fifth, Octave and Minor Third notes are all perfectly measurable. The intensity and the variety of these different harmonics constitute the timbre, unique to each instrument. The bell, however, does have one singularity: its third harmonic is lightly diminished, which makes it into a third minor. It is this third minor, which gives the bell is particular melancholic sound. |
