[pianotech] Belly Talk

[Ron Nossaman]

On 12/4/2012 12:44 PM, Joseph Garrett wrote:
> Ron said:
> "Sure, beveling the
> rasten is a reasonable presumption of necessity, but a flat rasten isn't
> the death of tone as gluing panels down to flat cutoff bars and fish
> will indicate."
>
> Ron,
> Clarification please. Is tone compromised when the board is glued to a
> cut-off and fish, if they are flat, rather than crowned?Or, do you put a
> complimentary crown in the cut-off and fish? In the past, I haven't worried
> about that and haven't had a problem....welll.....a percieved problem. Just
> wondering.<G>
> 'Preciate it.<G>

Hi Joe,
Someone may well have done it at some time, that I'm unaware of, but 
I've never seen a bass cutoff with either crown or a bevel, have you? I 
leave them flat, as I do the fish. Does it "hurt" the tone? Since I 
haven't found a practical way to test each configuration on the same 
piano at the same time for direct comparison (my multidimensional 
redundant duplicationation frambulator is on the fritz), I have to 
compare present experience with past by memory. Since the worst of my 
redesign efforts from the very first one, flat cutoff and fish included, 
sounded far superior to me than the best of my conventional rebuild 
attempts in years past (retaining all the old warts), that's a hair I 
don't need the trouble to pretend to split. No point in becoming an 
expert at the expense of further growth, when there are more pressing 
questions to pursue.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to save the "last working" version as a 
fall back while you continue to tinker with successive versions, like a 
spreadsheet file? Like an undo? Progress could be so much faster and 
cheaper and people (even techs) might actually be taught something by 
toggling back and forth between versions and listening. I want one!
Ron N