[pianotech] Totally glueless

[Terry Farrell]

Good Grief! Common sense?????  I always wonder with polite questioning in my mind when I hear tech talk about transmissions and vibrations shooting this way and that way - along bridges, along ribs, etc., etc.

The theory that "strings move the bridge and the bridge moves the soundboard" is the only thing that makes any sense to me. Why else do we have "vibrations" zinging this way and that, through this structure and that, bla, bla, bla. And then there is conversation about the rim - vibrations reflecting off the rim and back into the field of music (somewhere in the soundboard). What's that all about? I suspect it has some origin in the "sound collector"........

:-(

Terry Farrell

On Jan 30, 2013, at 9:11 AM, Ron Nossaman wrote:

> On 1/28/2013 9:43 PM, Ed Foote wrote:
> 
> 
>> The bigger question I thought of was of transmission of
>> sound through this joint.
> 
> Yes, that's been made a big deal of forever. There is no sound transmission through the joint though, at least not as is universally presumed. The strings move the bridge and the bridge moves the soundboard. As long as the bridge is sufficiently attached that it does move the soundboard, you won't hear the difference. In those old uprights with "cat on the screen door syndrome" there the bridge falls to the bottom when the strings are removed, you can definitely hear the difference, but I've restrung a number of players where the glue had let go but there were screws holding the bridge on, that sounded quite reasonable (age factored in) before tear down.
> 
> I find it interesting that people believe (without evidence of any sort) that horizontal glue joints in bridges impede sound transmission (or vibrations), as does lack of glue. Apparently, pianos are impossible objects that can't possibly function under any circumstances. Or...
> 
> Ron N