getting accustomed to a new sound. was Re: lexan or plexiglass for soundboards?

[Ron Nossaman]

Hi Wim,

You can bet your Great Aunt Fanny there's more to soundboards than the
quality of materials used. First, you have to intelligently define
'quality'. For soundboard assemblies (ribs and panel), from a purely
performance standpoint, quality equates to the physical properties of a high
stiffness/weight ratio, light weight, high rebound elasticity, low internal
damping (friction) and probably a couple of other things I'm not thinking of
at the moment. The material doesn't have to even be wood, much less spruce.
I think this is a lot like the attitudes surrounding horizontally laminated
bridges. They are pre-judged, by prejudicial ignorance, as being inherently
inferior, rather than just poorly used, so they are only used in the lower
end pianos. Naturally they sound lousy, but that isn't necessarily the fault
of the laminations because the piano would probably sound lousy with the
sexiest materials money could buy because it's a lousy piano. Since the only
pianos we see using these types of bridges and soundboards sound lousy, we
can point and sneer at how bad that laminated board/bridge sounds and the
self reinforcing delusion of the inherent inferiority of this type of
construction continues. Del's been saying all along that a laminated
soundboard can sound good if it's designed correctly, and I don't doubt it a
bit. The trouble is that you just don't hear good ones because manufacturers
aren't going to hang their future in the wind on something that the public
and technical community will condem in the rumor stage as inferior because
they KNOW that spruce sounds better. I've sure heard too many terrible
sounding, brand spanking new, state of the traditional art, solid spruce
soundboards with socially acceptable, vertically laminated bridges, to not
be willing to entertain alternatives based on scientifically defined
potential merit, rather than traditional ignorance.  

In other words, yea, I guess I agree.

 Ron