Piano Rims (rambling post)

[Ron Nossaman]

>Ron,
>How are these chimes mounted?  Are they cantilevers? 

They are a wire spiral or bar solidly mounted at one end or the other to an
equally solidly mounted or massy panel acting as a soundboard. A xylophone
tone bar or tuning fork have reaction masses counterbalancing each other in
opposition with the material they are made of acting as the spring. The
clock chime is the spring and needs a mass anchor. I would think a
soundboard would either have to be solidly anchored to something at the
edges, like the clock chime, or mass counterbalanced somewhere outboard of
the mounting perimeter like the tone bar, (or perpendicular to the board
and directly opposed like the fork) or it would waste it's energy in
flailing around rather than feeding it back into the system.


>If you were able to make a
>piano soundboard that is essentially simply supported, I still wonder if it
>would have desirable characteristics compared to a rigidly supported board.
>
>Phil F

I don't know, but it very possibly could with the right approach. I bet
there would be plenty of surprises and intrigue along the way too. Sounds
like fun. Let's get an obscenely huge grant and play with it for a few years.

Ron N