Interesting Old Soundboard

[John Delacour]

At 8:57 pm -0500 22/3/02, Farrell wrote:

| I yanked the soundboard out of an old (about 1890) Knabe upright the other
| day. I've been looking at it since then and have started to wonder about
| it. Why did they make it the way they did? It is thin. Six millimeters
| thick along the long bridge, and thinned to 4.5 mm in the area of the bass
| bridge. Is this unusually thin?

Two 1890s grands I am working on at the moment have soundboards of a
uniform 6 mm.  On the 6' Ibach the bass bridge is suspended on a 4 mm maple
apron and the 6'7" Lipp has a direct bass bridge slightly undercut at the
bass end.  I think you would probably find many good European pianos of the
last years of 19th century and early 20th with similar thicknessing.

On the other hand I have two Kirkman straight-strung grands (excellent
pianos) from 1860 and 1867 with soundboards in the 8 - 9 mm range.

I was in Frankfurt last week and spent some time with the chief design
technician of one of the big German makers.  On their latest range of
grands the soundboard is tapered from 9 mm. in the middle to 6 mm. at the
edges.

JD