David Love wrote: >Where the division is between RC&S and hybrid isn’t > that clear to me. Me either. It's a continuum, not like a magic spot where the clouds part and the holy sunbeam blesses the board. There's a pretty wide range. I've said many times that we're shooting at a pretty wide target here, and almost anything can produce a decent result at least often enough to appear to be working. If this wasn't the case, none of us would be able to build acceptable soundboards. >I design ribs to support everything required and rib > boards usually at 6.5% but if I go to 6% does that make it a hybrid > since I’m adding a bit more compression? I don't think so, because the ribs are still stout enough do the job by themselves. Then there's, as you said, seasonal changes and whether the piano ends up in Aridzona or Mississlippy. >One thing I do > notice about RC&S boards is that they are pretty tolerant of these > differences. Yes they are. They are also more tolerant of bearing loading and strike point differences, at C-8 as well as through the killer octave. >I’ve set up and heard pianos with rib scales that vary > somewhat and the tonal differences are minimal. You can obviously > overdesign a scale or underdesign it but within a range it seems to work > without too much difference in tonal response. Yes, just crowning the ribs, making them stiffer, and giving them a greater percentage of the load with lower panel compression helps noticeably. Going full RC&S helps more. >The other aspects such as rib material, > tapering, cut-off bars, fish, rib arrays I think of as features and may > or may not be components of any particular method. May not, but the bass cutoff and fish make the ribs shorter, therefor stiffer, before any other changes are made. Almost a freebie. > Clearly all methods are capable of producing good sounding pianos. As is continually acknowledged, and eternally defended in spite of the acknowledgment. > Given > other circumstances like unlimited time, money and resources I could see > experimenting more with the hybrid method. I want to try a piece of cheap plywood, like the 5mm mahogany Yamaha used to use for crates (I don't think the current cardboard would quite get it). Trying to make a living has gotten in the way of the plan so far. Years ago, I bent and glued a straight piece of scrap pine to a 20cm wide piece of that crate material. It's about 80cm long, with the single "rib" 20mm wide and 18mm tall. No feathering. It's crowned about 12mm in the middle, and will support over 200lbs without bottoming out. I'm not so sure we need carbon fiber, titanium, Kevlar, Nomex (except for flame suits), or most of the exotic approaches we (all) tend to automatically gravitate toward to make ourselves look high tech and marketable. Getting past the glitz and spin, and the DEEPLY entrenched mystical nonsense and denial, the basic requirements aren't apparently that exotic or even complicated. It just takes some education and work. When someone finally nails it down and quantifies it in detail, we can look back and see how close we were, or how very far off, with our chosen methods. The automatic "proof is in the pudding" defense isn't informative and no one learns anything at all from it. This isn't about voicing skills, market share, tone testimonials, or meticulous craftsman like attention to infinitely recursive details like becket alignment. It's about basic principles of function (and yes, I spelled it right this time in spite of the automatic brain dysfunction that wants to spell it "principals" even though I know the difference), and trying to discover what the rules actually are so we can all do better work more dependably. I have a quote (unknown source) on the wall that says "When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do". It reminds me that once I'm down to the molecules looking for a fix, it's already way too late, and it's time to go back, check premises, and question what I think I know. Sometimes it works... Ron N
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