[CAUT] Steinway "sound"

[David Love]

I'm not a wood technologist either and so I really don't know the answer to the question about kiln drying versus air drying and have to rely on those who know a lot more than I do.  So far I'm not convinced about a big difference there.  One of my suspicions about how the newer bellies age (with compression boards) verses the older ones doesn't lie in the area of how the wood is seasoned but in the advent of full diphragmization.  Speaking of redesign, some of it happened before all this recent talk and apropos to the discussion generally, I'm not sure those redesigns were a better thing (or that one anyway) and might even, one could argue, have contributed to a new wave of redesigns to handle the failures of the *original* redesigns.  

Better quit now, starting to feel like Rumsfeld with the known unknowns.    

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com

From: Brent Fischer
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 7:22 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Steinway "sound"

   With the current state of available wood selection and kiln drying 
methods that have been accelerated over the decades I have to really 
wonder if that isn't one of the more important core issues that we
overlook in these discussions. I think we have lost much of the spruce
that had slightly wider early wood rings transitioning into latewood. Better
growth seasoning if you will. I'm not a wood technologist but I firmly
believe there is a correlation between slower seasoned spruce, that
isn't rushed through the steam kiln to dry out the bound water, and
how a belly ages into a performance sound. Don't you think that
redesign starts there?

Brent