At 10:57 PM 5/13/99 -0400, you wrote: >Mr. Fandrich, or anyone else out there, Isn't the "stilted" or otherwise vented >bass bridge what I saw on a Bluthner grand at our local meeting a while back? >It sounded wonderful to me! Clark Sprague > Hi Clark, Del's apparently deep in the R&D dungeon and hasn't yet learned that "he has mail", but perhaps I can help. I don't know the Bluthner personally, but the generalities are pretty universal (with apologies for the glaring redundancy). There are a whole bunch of factors that determine how a piano, or any particular section in a given piano sounds. The tunnels under the bridge are the design part you can see, but aren't necessarily what makes the piano sound as good as it did. In the grand scheme of interaction between (among?) the various design parameters including string scaling, panel thickness, grain orientation, rib configuration, bridge placement, rim contour, etc, etc, the drive through bass bridge mount may actually make a difference in the sound, and it may actually be an audible difference, but there are a lot of other factors that would most probably make a bigger difference if they were changed. This is the kind of situation where magic would come in handy. If we could instantly toggle back and forth between full surface and intermittent contact mounting systems and listen for the difference, we could answer the question pretty quickly. I keep looking, hopefully, but I don't find the option in any of the catalogs. That being the case, we have to assign probability values, based on logic, physics, and empirical experience. Again, with apologies, let me put you in the designer's position for a moment. Listening to the piano, could you tell that it was the bridge mounting system that made the piano sound good, as opposed to any other set of design parameters? How? Ron
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