Floating soundboard

[John Delacour]

At 8:32 am -0500 22/3/02, ANRPiano@AOL.COM wrote:


|  I must have missed something a while back. 
|
|  What is a floating soundboard?
|
|  It seems to mentioned frequently in reference to the bass.

The soundboard of a "standard" modern piano is a clamped plate, that is to
say it is fixed to a more or less massive framing right round its
perimeter.  It was common practice in straight-strung grands of 19th
century to release the soundboard for 12" to 14" at the tail end of the
straight side in order to allow the lower frequency vibrations to develop
more freely.  Some people on this list are applying the same principle to
overstrung grands, where the low end of bass bridge is positioned close to
the heel of the piano a long way from the straight side.

Bösendorfer's Vienna-action grands at the turn of the century had the
soundboard "floating" right across the front, stiffened with a strip of
maple.  The only one of these I have owned was only 5'6" long and an
amazingly powerful piano in spite of its small soundboard.

It is interesting to observe experimentally the effects on the radiation of
different frquencies of removing the clamping at different points round the
perimeter.

JD