<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; = charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 5.50.4134.600" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>And If I haven't created enough confusion = yet, I'll toss out another one:</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Just why do we think gray iron is the best of = all possible materials to use for piano plates anyway? What is it about gray = iron that is so special? </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>We say it is extremely rigid -- but it is = not. It's brittle. Is this an advantage?</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>We say it has excellent internal damping characteristics -- but is this an advantage? Why?</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Right off hand I can think of only two = characteristics that make it a particularly good choice for piano plates: [1] It is easy = to machine and [2] it is cheap. Neither of these has anything to do with = its performance in the piano.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Del</FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>