At one point the musicians rapped their knuckles against the wood of their instruments.
The standard of their instruments, technical equipment and laboratories must, of course, also be very high.
Most luthiers wax almost mystical about wood and the hand-built qualities of their instruments.
That moment of truth, when they hear one of their instruments in performance, can go either way for the couple.
They tapped on the fingerboard, the bridge, the tailpiece and, especially, the gleaming wood body of their instruments.
The band was also known for its explosive performances, which often ended in the smashing of their instruments on stage.
Its development was gradual at first, as Mr. Dresser and Ms. Melford plucked obliquely at the strings of their instruments.
They switched the pace frenetically, toying with extreme noises of their instruments before reaching a mutual devastating crescendo.
When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order.
Instead of trying to imitate each other's phrasing, the two musicians simply allowed their different musical personalities -- and the different personalities of their instruments -- to answer each other.
At the booth, the scientists had set up one of their instruments, a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, a device little bigger than a golf bag.
