Whether the mainstream industry is yet ready to acknowledge this reality, laminated soundboards are finally coming into their own. No matter what competitors might say about them, they increasing use is inevitable. And as far as I'm concerned it can't be happening soon enough. It was obvious to me back in the 1980s that, designed decently, laminated soundboards have the potential to at least equal, if not surpass, the performance of the so-called "solid" spruce soundboards. This is especially true in low- to mid-range pianos where the standards for spruce are not-despite what the four-color-glossy tells us-as high as they once were. The standards and specifications for "soundboard" spruce has steadily decline over the past 40+ years; some of the stuff now going into pianos would, not all that long ago, have been considered suitable only for pallets or apple crates. And this situation is not going to improve anytime soon. With laminated soundboard construction offering so many practical and proven performance benefits it is beyond my comprehension that so many manufacturers chose to remain so ignorant about their potential and so recalcitrant about accepting and using them. We see the same thing going on with "plastic" piano actions except that here there is even more hypocrisy. On more than one occasion I've heard piano salespeople denigrated the Kawai plastic action and then expressing their shock-Yes, shock!-at being shown that the pianos they are promoting also use a few plastic action components. When plastic actions are mentioned we naturally think first of Kawai but in fact many manufacturers have been using plastic action components-flanges, jacks, damper levers, etc.-for some time. We hear little about them because they rarely present problems (and because most of them are cleverly colored to match the surrounding wood components). As with the laminated soundboard, the increasing transition to plastics of various sorts in piano actions is also inevitable as the cost of woods suitable for action making becomes increasingly scarce-read, "expensive." As with the laminated soundboard, sooner or later all those disparaging claims about the use of plastics in piano actions are going to come back to haunt. ddf Delwin D Fandrich Piano Design & Fabrication 620 South Tower Avenue Centralia, Washington 98531 USA del at fandrichpiano.com ddfandrich at gmail.com Phone 360.736.7563 From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Mckeever, James I Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 2:12 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] Hailun soundboards Hi Delwin, I'm very glad to hear this from you. I went to the Piano Book, and Larry Fine says this type of construction has advantages when done right. It is moving into better quality pianos. Since "laminated" used to mean cheap, manufactures (as others have pointed out) have different ways to describe it. Thanks! Jim McKeever -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110209/2a3f9774/attachment.htm>
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