CM was recorded from scale media in the first three turns of the guinea pig's cochlea using pure tone acoustic stimulation. Averaging followed by FFT analysis was used to obtain amplitude and phase of the harmonic components. The acoustic stimulus was fixed in frequency at about 120 Hz, and sound pressure level was varied from 0 to 120 dB SPL. As harmonics appeared above the noise level of 0.1 μV, their slope with respect to SPL was found to approximateN× 6 dB/octave, whereNdesignates the number of the harmonic. At about the same SPL, all harmonics demonstrated saturation. At 120 dB SPL roughly 35 harmonics appeared above the noise level. The magnitude data supports a model in which a changing resistance is represented by a real‐valued power function of basilar membrane motion. However, the observed relationships indicate that such a model is inadequate to explain CM generation. [Supported by NIH grant 1P1NS12732‐01.]