Reverse Crown Soundboard/Rippen

[Bdshull@AOL.COM]

Terry, Del,

Greetings!  I am venturing back into the fray of this list after a brief 
educational foray.....

Some random musings - I have serviced one Rippen cast iron grand with this 
board.  It exhibited classic reverse crown/poor down bearing symptoms - it 
had little power or sustain.  I then checked and found reverse crown, which I 
believed was not intended by the manufacturer until Del's observations of 
some time ago.  Soundboards seem to have greater durability in Southern 
California than in some parts of the country;  I don't know if this board 
resembles its original state or not. 

Just curious, Del:  Why do you think Rippen would use a "liberal dose of 
string bearing" if the board started flat?  

How important is crown in tone production, anyway?  My favorite personal 
experience is the 6'3" Starr with negative crown I did strings and pinblock 
on 10 years ago.  I know crown on this one was positive once, based on how 
much negative downbearing it had when I found it!  A conservative downbearing 
approach gave this piano plenty of sweet singing in the treble.  Could it be 
that crown isn't so important unless power is needed?  Or does lack of crown 
set the piano up for more rapid loss of downbearing (all other things equal)? 
 

The Rippen might not be a good example, with its small soundboard "rim" 
screwed to the cast iron rim;  I wondered about the stability of this light 
perimeter - could it also have shifted and lessened downbearing?

Terry's new Steinway vertical is an interesting case (even more than 
interesting for you, I know, Terry).  I do a program on the Steinway upright, 
and point out the more substantial ribbing in the 19th century verticals.  
The newer verticals may not be able to support substantial downbearing 
because of the wider rib spacing and overall lighter rib design than 19th 
century designs;  might a "K" or 45/1098 with substantial crown and more 
substantial high treble ribbing be a considerably more powerful piano? 
(Duplexing or not...)   Someone (Del?) suggested that the wider rib spacing 
in the high treble is necessary in order to to achieve crown through 
atmospheric crowning techniques - more substantial ribbing would resist 
crowning action after glueup.      

I save for another thread my crown/bearing musings about a "D" with new board 
we just did  -

Bill Shull, RPT
University of Redlands, La Sierra University
Loma Linda, CA

In a message dated 6/28/01 8:34:10 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
pianobuilders@olynet.com writes:

<< Rippen is the first one that comes to mind. I don't know when they started
 the practice but the pianos we sold in the 1970s had laminated soundboards
 that had been glued up to flat ribs in flat cauls. The were given a liberal
 dose of string bearing and allowed to crown backward.
 
 I don't know what the pianos would have sounded like with more conventional
 soundboard design, but those we saw sounded quite decent for their size and
 were exceedingly stable.
  >>