Rescaling for older soundboards

Joe Garrett joegarrett@earthlink.net
Sun, 14 Nov 2004 09:32:06 -0800


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David Love said: "Since an aging soundboard will presumably be less =
stiff with less
available crown, does it make sense, when restringing over an old board,
to consider rescaling the piano with a lower tension scale.

David Love
davidlovepianos@comcast.net=20

David,
Hmmmm? Older soundboards will be stiffer! The natural aging process of =
lumber exemplifies this. If you live in an older home, try driving a =
nail into the olde studs!!! Yeah, like w/o drilling a hole, first, =
you'll be bending nails 24/7!!! However, you do bring up an interesting =
point. My observation, on olde boards, is that the upper treble is very =
"loud" and, with a decent bridge termination, is very clear. Why? =
Because the board is stiffer. I think this is a very good reason to NOT =
use hard hammers on an olde board! In years past, a lot of the OLDE =
techs used to drop the entire scale, by 1/2 size! This approach, had =
some validity, but, I persoanally think this is the wrong thing to do. =
Of course, this practice came about, way before the Electronic Age of =
easy accessability to an easy way of doing the formulae. Thank god for =
the 'puter, in this case! I used to do scales on a TI! Talk about =
tedious! One had to be really adamant about scales to persue that! (Let =
alone, doing it with a Slide Rule. (you do remember those lovely =
gadgets, don't you?<G>)
As for the scaling, in and of itself, all we can do is to smooth out the =
inconsistancies of the original factory screwups/design. And, hopefully, =
not overstress the original intent of the structure design. At least, =
this is my approach to scaling. If we are dealing with a new board, then =
it's a whole different approach, IMO.
Best Regards,
Joe Garrett, R.P.T.
Captain, Tool Police
Squares R I
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