Claims that silencing inharmonic partials improve tone deserve experimental verification

Evidence

Some writers, Sir James Jeans among them, have claimed that since the 7th and 11th (and also the 13th) partials are so far off from their musical scale counterparts, as seen in figure 26.8, efforts to keep them silent (such as placing the hammer on a piano near a nodal point for both the 7th and 11th partials) will be rewarded by making the resulting tone more pleasing and sonorous. This sounds right, but, on the other hand, all the partials are combining to make a perfectly periodic tone. — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2354

Categorization

• QUESTION: The passage flags a tension: Jeans’ intuition about damping the 7th/11th partials may be wrong because the tone stays perfectly periodic regardless. Worth chasing the resolution.