Laminated Soundboard Blues

[Horace Greeley]

Hi, Ron,

Quoting Overs Pianos <sec@overspianos.com.au>:

> Yes David, all but one of our pianos have laminated soundboards. The
> piano at Reno had a laminated panel. Thanks for coming to the
> laminated panel's defence. The idea is being rejected simply on the
> basis of low end trashy pianos using low end trashy non-spruce
> laminated panels. When is some sanity going to come to this matter? I
> believe the concept warrants further serious consideration. But I'll
> no doubt be accused by some of pushing my own barrow.

While at this point it would be very difficult to prove, there was a series
of experiments done by Kimball/Bosendorfer ~ 25 years ago using (among
other things) laminated boards.  Part of those experiments included
construction of several Bosendorfers of various sizes with boards made of
laminated spruce.  Three laminations, if memory serves, all spruce - none
of the mahogany that plaqued the production Kimball, Story&Clark, etc.
PSOs. The ones I saw were Imperials, but I was told that there were others
built.

In talking with the R&D people at Kimball, they had put these instruments
into carefully constructed A - B tests environments with most of the people
who were Bosendorfer artists at the time; and, to the surprise of
practically no one, they found that, among people who could tell the
difference (in some way) to begin with, the laminated boards were favored
by everyone.  Certainly, the ones I saw were much more even as to scale and
response, easier to tune and voice.  Even more impressive, to me, anyway,
was that they had also had the foresight to let some visiting technicians
look at, touch, feel, tune, etc...with the same result (including that a
number of folks could not hear any difference between a laminated and
non-laminated board).  In short, it was very clear that the only things
stopping putting this style board into production was marketing and public
perception.

Sadly, if not tragically (in retrospect), when Kimball finally did start
using laminated boards (in the Kimball brand), they were truly and
obviously inferior.  There were a few of the "Viennesse" series grands
(sorry, I no longer remember the model numbers, but nominally 6') which
sort of, kind of worked.  However, the smaller grands and uprights just
stank.

So, Ron, anyway, feel free to push your own barrow!

> If one wants to be kept in ignorance, by all means keep listening to
> the uninformed chatter of salespeople, or the chatter of those who
> chose a word/email processor as his/her primary research tool.

Well said.

> The problem of our age is sorting the worthwhile information from the
> oceans of BS and chaff.

One does weary.

Best.

Horace


>
> Ron O.
> --
> OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY
>     Grand Piano Manufacturers
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> Web http://overspianos.com.au
> mailto:ron@overspianos.com.au
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