poxy on soundboards and seminar in Bruxelles

[Richard Brekne]

Long discussion, lots of stuff back and forth on this in the archieves  
"Damage at cellular level" is like a real can of worms and in reality 
can just as easily interpreted in this application as a positve more 
then a negative.  The fact that it is 100 years old is also a positive 
in many minds. Making pianos is simply not just a matter of engineering 
principles and mathematics... in fact these tools are far less useful 
then many here would like to have it.  They become totally useless in my 
mind, when they define away any musicality that does not conform to 
their parameters.

How does the piano sound, how long can it last... that is in the end the 
primary concern.  Re-ribbing old panels is a fairly common proceedure 
over here, and I can assure you they sound and perform quite well... 
despite whatever concerns about the lack of some stiffness or other 
presumed negatives based on whatever understanding of relavant 
engineering principles these concerns stem from.

Heck... even Del a few years back  stated straight out that such a panel 
should sound and perform virtually identical to a new panel similarilly 
rib crowned... and its easy enough to find that series of posts between 
him and I.  I reacted immediatly to the claim that on the one hand you 
had this  "compression damage" thing that virtually rendered the panel 
useless, then on the other hand this same useless peice of wood could be 
rib-crowned and made to function just like a new rib crowned board.  I 
still dont see that a clear explaination to that seeming contradiction 
was ever supplied... but clearly that must be because of  some lack of 
understanding on my part.

Cheers
RicB

David Love wrote:

>Why would you trouble yourself to take the ribs off a panel that has
>damage at the cellular level and then use it again with new ribs.
>Especially in the upper end of the piano where much of the stiffness is
>provided by the panel and not the ribs, this seems like folly to me.
>That panel you are trying to salvage bears no resemblance to the panel
>that was originally installed once it's gone through 100 years of
>expansion and contraction. 
>
>David Love
>davidlovepianos@comcast.net 
>
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