Hi Calin. I understand the viewpoint you express. My feelings were and are that exactly what you say has been done so many times now that there was no real need to repeat the exercise. I changed only the details that I did (and nothing else) for the very express idea of isolating what I did from all other design issues in order to be able to more accurately judge the results of these changes. In addition... I wanted to stay close to the kinds of things I imagine/believe/make educated guesses at that Bluthners original thinking were. Hence I kept the grain angle the same, rib and <<cutoff bar>> (a kind of soundboard divider it seems in this case) dimensions all the same. The only thing we really did was introduce a little crown and extra stiffness to the treble area by way of the lamination process... which in itself does not represent a huge deviation from the original design with respect to grain angle since the middle ply is only 20 degrees offset and represents less then 1/3 of the total thickness of the panel. With this approach I hope to maintain very much of the original bass sound and enhance the clarity and sustain of the treble area... otherwise keeping fairly close to the original sound. Personally... I see no point in putting a completely modern belly in such an instrument... but thats just me. I have approached this with the intent to more or less expound on the original design. Move in much the same directions as he originally did. We will see how well I succeeded when its finished. And like I say...with respect to historical concerns. The original soundboard will be cleaned up, refinished and framed so that historical archive concerns are preserved. If somebody at any given point in the future decides to do exactly what you suggest then... they are able to refer to the original assembly and do exactly that. I think I kind of have covered my rear end nicely in that regard :) Cheers and thanks for the comments RicB Ric, I find that changing the treble scale and the soundboard design (laminating it) makes the piano something else than an original 1850's Bluethner. I think preservation would have been the best solution with this instumrnt, along with building an exact replica, for those who want to hear how it probably sounded when new. And when I say exact replica, I mean one that includes all known aspects of the original design, including those we would nowadays consider faulty or detrimental to the instrument's longevity. Since you bothered changing some design details, you could have changed the whole design concept (like using better rib support and new rib locations with the laminated panel etc.) and make it into a better sounding and more useful instrument, at least according to modern taste. Terry, The new soundboard looks very nice, congratulations! Calin Tantareanu http://calin.haos.ro
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