To repeat. Steinway & Sons, New York and Hamburg, make no attempt at normalizing structural strength factors of wood with the intent of minimalizing resultant differences in sound from panel to panel. Given their basic philosophy that these exact differences are a positive... I dont see why anyone should expect them to. The fact they Steinway chooses not to attempt to do this however, by no means speaks to whether it is possible or not to do so. Cheers RicB I would guess that the Hamburg Steinway factory goes to great lengths--as much as anyone--to control the EMC at glue up. While I agree this is anecdotal and doesn't constitute a comprehensive study, it does speak to the issue of variability in panel response to compression style crowning and/or the difficulty in environmental control during manufacturing. If I am not mistaken, these boards are hybrids and have crowned ribs as well suggesting that while, presumably, there is less reliance on panel compression, one still can't escape it in this particular method. David Love davidlovepianos at comcast.net www.davidlovepianos.com
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