Laurent,

Sorry it took a while to get back to you.

There is a lot of physics that gets swept under the rug of the proportionality constant in my first comment.

The concept being pushed is that what we feel is dominated by the forces on the rod rather than a 'ringing' of the blank. The rod is a damped oscillator and will quickly damp most oscillations. How long it takes to damp the vibrations is determined by the physical properties of the rod (inertia, material, geometry, etc.). What we feel are events that impart a (relatively) high amount of force to the rod for a short time. The shorter the time the higher the force for the same momentum transfer, and the greater the jerk (change in acceleration/time). The properties of the rod come into play by determining how close the signal we feel is to the original signal. The momentum transfer is going to set the area under the force v. time plot, and the properties of the rod will increase the width of the signal and decrease its amplitude.

Emory defines sensitivity as the ratio of kinetic energy imparted to the tip of the rod to the kinetic energy imparted to the angler by dropping a given weight from a prescribed height and measuring how much the rod moves at the anglers hand. This is a great measurement, and can be very useful.

Shoot me an email if you want to talk further offline.

Joe