Del just reminded us of his article series on the subject, and as I understand the reasoning and what factual material he presents, compression ridges are simply bound to form in significant numbers whenever the compression crowned soundboard method is used. CC boards and variants have been made for-like-ever so either Del is wrong, which he isnt, or ridges have been around as long as boards have been made this way... and quite likely in similar numbers. Better materials in the past (if thats indeed true to begin with) could perhaps influence that picture somewhat... but the principles of compression crowning remain the same. Cheers RicB I guess the older Steinways were not manufactured correctly, as I don't recollect any mention of this before. So obviously, they just learned to make them correctly. :-) John M. Ross Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada jrpiano at win.eastlink.ca
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