Soundboards

[Richard Moody]

> Now who you gonna call?>

For the answer I called Alfred Dolge, and I quote from _Pianos and Their
Makers_
    During the writer's engagement with Mathushek in 1867-69, exhaustive
tests were made to find the most responsive thickness for a soundboard.
With boards  fully one inch in thickness, without ribs, graduated down
to boards only three-sixteenths in treble and proportionatley heavy ribs,
numberless tests were made.  Curious to relate all of the pianos had a
satisfactory tone, differeing of course, in quality.  The thick boards
responded with a thick somewhat stiff, woody quality, the pianos with the
thinner boards had a more sympathetic, soulful, but weaker tone.  The most
satisfactory tone quality was found in the pianos which had the "regulation"
soundboard, three-eights of an inch thick in the treble, tapering off to one
fourth inch in the bass, ribs placed at nearly equal distances apart, execpt
in the last treble octave, where they lay somewhat closer together." p.
108-109.

However Dolge notes, " in 1891 Mathushek  patented his duplex soundboard,
which is a combination of two boards, cross banded and glued together.  The
boards are made thichest at the center where the bridge rests, in order to
withstand the pressure of the strings." p 109.

I am not sure how the "diaphramatic soundboard" is constructed, but I guess
it is thicker or thinner on the edges.  Thinner because it is easer to get
than thicker on a non lamanated board.

---ric


> OK Richard......for $10,000 here I go......
>
> <Now for a test question, where was the 3/8 inch, A: Treble  B:
> Bass  C: Middle D: Rim.
> If you need a "life line" to eliminate two, the remaining would be
> A:Treble,
> B:Bass.
> Now who you gonna call?>
>
> I'm gonna call Antonio Stradavarii............ he's gonna say......the
> answer is "A" and I will agree.  Logic says the rim area is not an "end"
> and the middle is not an "end".  Only two choices......
>
> Tom Robinson
> East Tennessee
>
Brian Trout writes...
> So, to answer your question, the soundboard is typically thickest at the
> belly rail, and gets thinner as it approaches the nose end.  Numbers that
> are in common use are varied.  Belly rail thickness can be 3/8.  I've
heard
> of a little more, and I've heard of a little less.  I've seen thickness at
> the nose at as little as 6/32, and then some that had little difference
from
> the bellyrail thickness.