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<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 4/8/2005 7:22:40 A.M. Central Daylight Time,
draine@comcast.net writes:</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>There's
always some bad apples in the barrel. Especially when the <BR>(vintage '60=
s
thru early '80s) barrel is labeled "Kimball", "Kohler & <BR>Campbell",=
or
"Wurlitzer." If the customer puts in a DC system -- with <BR>a back cover =
--
they should find the piano achieving stability.<BR>Otherwise, it's time fo=
r a
better piano.<BR>Patrick Draine<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>Patrick,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Thanks for your reply. While I agree with you, (and I have trashe=
d
many such pianos from this era), I still am puzzled how the piano belly gain=
ed
so much energy in such a short period of time and with very little climate
change. You would expect a piano which has a 40 year history of wild p=
itch
swings like what has been observed so far to be breaking apart some where by=
now. But outside of the bass bridge beginning to split on the waste en=
d, I
could find nothing structurally wrong. Since it has a very f=
ancy
cabinet and a surprisingly nice tone we would like to try to save the piano =
for
the customer.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Granted, economically speaking, this piano is not worthy of any extreme=
measures of life support, however I would like to learn something here. =
;
Since I can't find an obvious reason for the problem, I can't point to the o=
ver
dried board, which is now swelled and broken itself from the ribs, (seen ple=
nty
of these) I am curious as to the dynamics of what is going on. I
understand how a standard spruce soundboard absorbs moisture, etc. but what
about a laminated board? I would have assumed greater stability, am I
wrong? Who knows how exactly Kimball put the soundboard together, but =
as a
general rule what would the expectations be for a laminated soundboard? =
;
Spruce boards will move the most in the middle of the scale, do laminated
soundboards move across the entire scale like this one has?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Just trying to learn.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Andrew Remillard</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>