Hi Dale Prompts me to ask a bit about an idea being thrown around in an off list dialoug I am having with a couple folks. The idea is not mine but it sounds intriguing. Let me throw this at you (and whomever else might be interested to comment). I'll let the fellow who threw this at me speak up for him/her self if they so choose. The primary acoustic function of the ribs is to transfer sound cross grain more or less as fast as it otherwise buzzes along the grain. What if we could make a soundboard with enough crown support perpendicular to the bridge without support from the ribs (or nearly as much as we use in todays instruments) ? The idea that strikes me as being able to perhaps do exactly this is to allign the grain perpendicular to the bridge, and construct a pre-crowned soundboard panel of several laminants, all with grain going the same direction. With the grain going perpendicular to the bridge and what crown support the unribbed soundboard would have, cross grain ribbing would be able to do their acoustic job and provide a bit of extra support to the curvature of the wood while being of much smaller dimensions. In addition... the bridge itself would function like the ribs in speeding sound cross grain. It might be a way of approaching the different requirements of the bass and high treble areas. Cheers RicB Ric Well .....When the return on investment is marginal, many alterations do not pay. I am a business man too. However they both got the usual rib crowned treatment with taller narrower spruce ribs instead of the original sugar pine rib, plus some panel tapering. I have to remind myself that one of the biggest alterations you can make is to use & crown spruce ribs to achieve bearing load support. This makes a tremendous improvement even though it may not solve all the anomalies many of us on list do not care for. The top 3 treble sections hammer strike line , was VERY fussy & Closely dialing that in made a tremendous difference.....as it always does. Thanks Dale
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