<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2873" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV> <DIV>  Ed</DIV> <DIV>  Purely fascinating.  See it isn't' just us modern folks that were trying out fun stuff.</DIV> <DIV>  Dale</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>>   Greetings, <BR>>      My parents' piano is a 1870 Hallet & Davis. It is not <BR>> veneered, but rather made with solid maple body parts.  The <BR>> soundboard is completely flat,and was designed that way. The <BR>> bridge has agraffes that have steeply slanted holes in them, <BR>> and they alternate so that the back strings are either rising <BR>> from them to meet the hitch pins, or slanting just as steeply <BR>> down to the hitch.  The effect of the alternating bearing is <BR>> to rigidly lock the board in place.  This piano has a boomy <BR>> bass and a weak treble.  <BR>>      I tried all sorts of things, but there was no way to get <BR>> an even response out of this board.  I have some rather <BR>> serious misgivings about flat soundboards.  <BR>> Regards, <BR>>  <BR>> Ed Foote RPT<BR>> http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html<BR>> www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html<BR>>  </FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV> </DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>