Hi I have wondered about this for several years, I wonder if a synthetic material be used to replace spruce soundboards and has anyone in the group experimented with soundboards? Lexan(I am not sure if I spelled that correctly) is used in high power speaker boxes. It looks sort of like Plexiglas. It seems to be very responsive as far as amplification and vibration goes. I was thinking that an experiment could be made with a cheap old upright that has a solid piano action, By tearing it down, Gluing the ribs to a 1/4" sheet of lexan (or similar material) forcing crown into the material, installing the bridges & restring the old piano and finding out how loud the tone would be. I certainly think it would not suffer cracks like the old spruce does. Who knows........ it might be very loud and sweet or it might be completely dead! Also I would like a source for ABS plastic hammer butts. I have heard about them and would like to try a set on a player piano to see how well they would hold up in a high stress situation. I would appreciate your thoughts. Andy Taylor
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