tower-guy-01__2007-09-15.wav

Part one - Piezoelectric contact transducer secured to a stranded cable guy wire supporting a radio tower. The guy wire is probably 100-150 feet long, tower is about 250 feet high. You will hear sounds traveling through the long steel elements of the wire and also the tower as well. There a strobe light on the very top of this tower. When it flashes, it makes small, mechanical noise that travels through the entire tower and all the guy wires. You can hear this as a 'pinging' sound. I also plucked the guy wire like a guitar string. This is how they made the famous sound effect in Star Wars. Since Steel is a dispersive medium, the sounds start high in frequency and then fall to low frequency. Piezo element directly connected to line input (Not mic input) of a Marantz PMD660