Orthotropic Soundboard (was Laminated Soundboard Ribs)

[Ron Nossaman]

>True.  But it would be helpful to those that come
>after to talk about those ideas and what was done
>about them.  For example, I've talked before about
>bridge agraffes (or other string terminations on the
>bridge).  I think this is an interesting idea.  

I do too.


>There
>are many patents for various versions and some versions
>were actually built and put into service.  Why was
>the idea abandoned?  I just have to conjecture.
>Maybe there was a good technical reason or maybe it
>was purely business or economics. But if there was
>a technical reason, and if someone who did this and
>observed it in service for 20 years had written about
>it in any meaningful way then I wouldn't need to
>repeat all that work.

But they didn't, so we do if we really want to know. 


>How do we know that bleeding and leeches are not good
>medical practice?  Because someone, or several people,
>did a lot of work to prove it and wrote it down.  And
>wrote it down with supporting data so that someone
>later could look at what was written and become
>convinced without having to repeat everything that
>they did.



>Should I reinvent calculus rather than read what Newton
>wrote several hundred years ago?  Should I carve up a
>few dozen cadavers to learn about anatomy rather than
>reading Gray?  

Fortunately, you don't have to. Nor are Newton or Gray the only sources of
information on calculus or anatomy. Thousands of texts have been produced
expanding and detailing what Newton and Gray started. We don't presume that
Newton and Gray are the final word, and anything not specifically covered
by their original works can't be, or must be if it can be divined by
inference and interpretation of their texts. If the hundreds of people
involved in piano R&D in the last 150 years had documented their
experiments, brutally detailing conditions, intentions, expectations, and
results (good and bad), we would have sifted out most of the mythology and
boiled down a much more comprehensive and non contradictory set of cause
and effect relationships in how pianos work by now. Wouldn't that have been
a terrific resource? Imagine being able to get detailed objective
information on aspects of this work that the average tech isn't ever likely
to accumulate on his own. I would like to think that this is the very
reason for the seminar and convention classes, and this list. Hey, I think
we're making headway. A few things have been learned since the old
literature was written. We just need to make sure it's written it into the
new editions as honestly as possible.


Ron N