Laminated Soundboard Blues

[Ron Nossaman]

> > While I'm not altogether convinced they necessarily need be made of
> > spruce,
> > it's obvious that laminated panels are typically pre-judged as being
> > inferior, most often by those who have no practical experience in
> > soundboard design and fabrication.
>
>In this case, going back to Terry's first post, we find this URL:
>
>http://www.calgarysun.com/cgi-bin/niveau2.cgi?s=generic&p=9666.html&a=1
>
>Which, with a little research, leads one to:
>
>http://www.irenebesse.com/
>
>At which site we quickly discover that there is reason for a fair amount of
>pre-judgement to be going on.

Hi Horace,
We do? I'm not seeing it. What am I missing?


>One hopes that, with some more exposure to well-done laminated boards, the
>opposition would be shown for what it is...marketing blather.

Yes, one continues to hope.


>There was a
>time, of course, when this might not have been true; however, the last bit
>of dust-up in Europe a few decades back meant things like most of the
>remaining best quality spruce going into glider making instead of pianos.

The problems I've seen with laminated boards aren't the result of not 
having top grade spruce, in my opinion, but rather trying to build a 
soundboard assembly without awareness or accommodation of the differences 
between solid spruce and laminated whatever panels. I see no reason that a 
well functioning soundboard couldn't be made using the old Story & Clark 
Incomparable Storytone Mahogany Plywood crating stock, with a little 
awareness and a few necessary design changes.


>And, sadly, there has not been sufficient numbers of quality instruments
>with laminated boards for the "average" person (or, technician, for that
>matter) to get anything more real than the marketing hype.

True, and it still remains that too often, the piano will be judged not by 
how it actually sounds and performs, but by what the average person (and 
most certainly the tech) "knows" to be an inferior construction. Opinions 
tend to change with revelations of anything different than we think we 
know, regardless of what we hear for ourselves. Getting past that seems to 
be the biggest problem.

Ron N