Susan Kline wrote: "Assembly quality, surely. But you didn't mention quality of wood. They took a real hit during WWII." That was exactly my question, Susan. I'm of the humble opinion that boards can't be compared because no two cuttings of wood from the same tree, much less different trees can be consistent enough to yield predictable results with regard to aging. While I concede this is not my area of expertise, my opinion is based on my limited knowledge of violin making and how it is difficult to know just how the instrument is going to turn out until the carving is complete. You can have two pieces of spruce the same age with the same number of grains per inch and wind up with two very different results, and then even the wood of the bow can further affect it. So, certainly two different pieces of wood would age with different results. On the same subject, I have also heard pianists - faculty members, not touring artists - speak favorably of the tone of a good OLD piano, and I'm not talking about from the golden era. One in particular is a D from the late 1960s (back in the day when one could easier afford to buy a used C&A Steinway), with original hammers, original teflon action, crappy regulation, noise from both agraffes and capo, and strings so corroded it's nearly impossible to tune as they ping ping ping ping through the agraffes just on either side of where the pitch needs to end up. But, he's a music professor, so he's just not going to have $10K-$15K laying around to get all that rebuilt. But he just beams when he plays it after tuning, and he goes on and on about how this is what a good piano should be like. He's not the only one. I figure they develop that affinity from college days, before the days of maintenance budgets and staff tuners, much less RPTs. This kind of pianist for some reason favors out of regulation, knocking keys, poorly voiced, etc., they developed their skills on over the hyper-maintained concert and studio instruments of today. And they can make quite beautiful music on pianos like that. That's my theory at least. Jeff Tanner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100615/3d314b5f/attachment.htm>
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