Hey RIc --Greg Been out of town & missed a lot of this. RIc you make a good case here with room for reasonableness. Hi again Greg... Certainly as a CC board an old panel which has been weakened due to compression set will be difficult to make work as a CC board. At least more difficult then a new panel. You bet The degree with which the panel has compression strength left is the determinant here. Feasibly one could de-rib such a panel, dry it out and use it again in some kind of compression reliant assembly with success. But I probably wouldn't advise it or sell it with a warranty to a client. It would depend on the integrity of the panel & the desired outcome expected by the client & rebuilder. For some folks the wood is sacred & for others the wood is a crap shoot & a risk not worth taking. Using it in an RC & S assembly on the other hand should be quite alright as Del stated some years back. I believe there is some truth to what Thump posted about old wood... and as a result I would think such an assembly would sound a bit different then an assembly using a brand new board. But perhaps any difference is marginal after all. Using a panel such as this would be only wise if the panel was by in large Rib crowned & supported & dried to no more than say 6% I am kind of skeptical to using phrases like "cellular destruction" myself... not because there is anything inherently untruthfully about the phrase... but because it conveys a sense of the wood being rendered totally useless as a soundboard... which clearly is not the case. Some panels which have survived really well perhaps not but, When doing restorative work Udo was removing the badly damaged & cellularly destroyed wood & then machining a new joint & then gluing the panel back together. Kind a like removing dry rot. I'd do the same protocol if called upon Ric... A split panel caused by compression ridging due to climate & bearing pressure is what it is because it has at least in some locations exceeded the elastic limit of the wood. Now come on Ric. I also believe the whole compression set argumentation is well overstated. Not meaning to deny it is a significant factor in the life of a soundboard ... but I do find that there are very many old pianos that have very nice sound by any standards left in them. No question. But many more do not. Pure statistics leads me away from accepting compression reliant panels as having a built in self destruct mechanism. Well they due when dried to extreme Treat them well... give them a reasonably nice climate... and they will hold up nicely for a very long time indeed. No Argument here I know there are many on piano tech that disagree. Yes & at the end of the day it's up to each one to make there best choice of methods based on what they know works, feel comfortable with or understand that theie design is pushing the tonal for good reason & thier clients are good with that. I also note that the vast majority of pianos made today rely on significant degrees of compression in there soundboards. These companies, at least many of them I believe... are well aware of all the issues we discuss and their significance. Maybe not but thye make this their choice any way & the results are as we see in the field. Some good , some great & some......... I haven't read all these myriad of post but one essential element is being grossly over looked & that is the Rebuilders interest in designing a sound board with a varity of tonal envelopes such a what was heard in Rochester. Cheers back at Ya Dale Cheers RicB **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20080131/f46710d9/attachment.html
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC