Sorry, it's 6:45 am, and I missed the part of your note about the flat board and zero crown being in the same area as the dead sound. I'd still try a few things w the action first, though. Wally At 10:51 PM 6/14/01 -0400, you wrote: >Looking for a second (or third!) opinion on a soundboard. This is the 5' 4" >Knabe grand that I just finished installing a keybed in. I just flipped it >over and put the action in (it actually fit in - yeaaaa!). Piano sounds a >bit weak and has a bad killer octave area. I measured for downbearing with >the goofy little three point brass thingee. Absolutely ZERO downbearing on >the whole long bridge. Everywhere. Zero. Never saw that before. A little bit >of bearing on the bass bridge. Checked for crown with the string. Excellent >even 3/32" crown roughly centered under long bridge for the two tenor >sections, about 1/16" to 1/32" crown for the lower part of the treble >section, and zero crown for the upper treble section (exactly where the >killer octave area starts!) and the high treble section. > >I'm gonna have one more go with the owner (a hospital - my guy who makes the >piano decisions is the dude you call to have a light bulb changed or if you >get stuck in the elevator) about rebuilding. I need to decide how heavily I >am going to push a new soundboard. The board has no cracks. I had to glue >the tenor end of the long bridge back to the soundboard a few year ago >because it was buzzing. > >I clearly feel a new soundboard is needed to bring the piano up to its >potential. But, playing devil's advocate, most of the board has good crown - >why not just recap the bridges and put in appropriate downbearing - although >admittedly this would be tough in the high treble where there is already a >flat board - although hard to measure the little bit of crown that >would/should be there. > >I say if the plate is coming out for new bridge caps, give it a new board >also - otherwise they will likely have a very lackluster bla piano. >Waddayasay??? > >Terry Farrell >
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