[CAUT] Fwd: Mason & Hamlin soundboard model with tuning fork

[Bob Hohf]

I confess to being a member of the Mason & Hamlin cult, having a M&H CC in my living room, and after decades of studying M&Hs of all vintages, believing that they have the most advanced design of any piano.

 

There are some important elements of the M&H system that I haven’t seen mentioned in this discussion:

 

1.        Unlike any other piano that I have ever seen, the surface of the M&H inner rim where the soundboard is glued is contoured like the rolling swell on a calm ocean.  This is not hard to measure—take a stick and check the distance between the top of the soundboard and the top of the rim in any M&H.  The contour is more pronounced in the older ones.

2.       The inner rim of a M&H is the heaviest in the business.  The heaviest beams in the business are attached to the bottom of the rim, apparently intended to resist compression along their length.  The spider is above the beams, obviously designed to resist tension. The spider is sandwiched between the soundboard and the braces.  Many have criticized this design as “over-engineering” seemingly because the structural system can resist many times the amount of stress that any soundboard will ever be able to exert on it.  I’d suggest that the idea of “over-engineering” has no place in piano design, and that there’s more to the system than preserving soundboard crown.

3.       The inner/outer rim design allows the contouring of the inner rim and the construction of the structural system.

 

Richard Gertz, the inventor of the M&H system, was one of the great innovators of piano design. To look back at his work and judge it based on modern sensibility amounts to historical revisionism.  Although we can only guess at his intent behind the design, it is called the “Centripetal Tension RESONATOR”, not the “Centripetal Crown Preserver”.  Even if the theory that Gertz was working with was wrong, it doesn’t alter the fact that there is something about the system that produces pianos with incomparable tone and resonance. 

 

Bob Hohf

Wisconsin

 

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Euphonious Thumpe
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 5:49 AM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Fwd: Mason & Hamlin soundboard model with tuning fork

 


… Should it not be remembered that the M&H turnbuckle device does not CREATE crown ( that is done during board construction) but rather is intended to merely preserve it (in all planes, even if ever so slight) by preventing "case spread"?
Would those who are so critical of the efficacy of this device ( and the very importance of crown ) also fully explain to us, please, why they impart crown, at all, in their own board designs? (Yes, I belive it has been well explained as "for stiffness" -- but perhaps the "spider" assists in this, and serves another function also - such as in transferral of vibration equitably from one part of the case to another, and consequently back to the board, helping to create the M&H's nearly unique, signature, resonance.) 
Could not the value of the M&H device be simply demonstrated by temporarily removing one, and making a scientific before/after analyzation of tone? ( In same RH, temperature, barometric pressure and etc..) 

Most Respectfully,
Thumpe

 

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