Amazing stories! (was Re: different soundboards)

[Frans Sedee]

I used to tune for a concert pianist who had a tuner in Lyon, France, that
in the years he serviced her piano slowly became deaf, but still could do a
good tuning job. She told me he started feeling on everything vibrating
where he could not listen anymore. Checking this story for myself I found
that most beats you can actually feel f.i. in your tuning lever. This does
seem to depend on the quality of the instrument. I had to give up in the
higher register though.
My client was certainly not deaf and was one of the few that would discuss
the octave-stretching she desired with me.
Tuning the lowest bass strings I often press my upper leg to the keybed to
feel if there is a slow beat I can't hear or can't hear immediately in the
octave.

Another soundboard story: The Schimmel factory (Braunschweig, Germany)
produced a piano where the soundboard could also be used as a loudspeaker,
to be connected to any audio amplifier. The same factory patented a few
years ago a soundboard construction where a woodfibre plate is "sandwiched"
between two thin metal layers.

Frans Sedee