Sitka EMC

[Ron Nossaman]

>           I have some Sitka spruce boards made from air dried lumber 
> cured for  twenty years. I can't tell a stitch of difference subjectively 
> or objectively in the sound. It ain't just one thing.
>          Dale Erwin

Nor is it the rib material, nor the annular ring angle, nor the rings per 
inch, nor the speed of sound through the material in any given direction, 
nor the tap tone of the assembly, nor the crown of the bridge or lack 
thereof, nor the vertical contour of the inner rim, nor the amount of 
sunlight per day the tree got on the North, South, East, West, or Underside 
of the mountain, nor the color or magic ingredients of the finish applied, 
nor the number of go bars applied per second in the assembly process, nor 
the centering of the high point of a constant radius curved rib directly 
under the bridge, nor the glass-like hardness of the glue used, nor the 
doweling of the bridge to the ribs, nor the cutouts under the bridge 
between ribs, nor the total soundboard area being bigger than anyone else's 
for a piano that size, nor the absolute perfect accuracy of achieving an 
exact 60', or 70', or 100' radius in the ribs, nor the necessity of drying 
the panel down to 4.725% MC (or whatever), +- 0.01%, nor the necessity of 
having the angle of the inner rim EXACTLY match the landing slope of the 
crowned board, nor the ribs being EXACTLY fitted to the sides, bottom, and 
most importantly, the ENDS of the rim mortices (to maintain the crown), nor 
the need for the panel to exactly meet the outer rim for optimal energy 
transfer, nor for the dense grain to go in the treble, while the looser 
grain goes in the bass, nor for the treble cap plate to be fitted to a 
panel that's beveled down to the belly bar so the high frequency energy of 
the treble won't leak out the open end grain. There are probably others, 
but my brain just seized up and refused to go into it any further.

Oddly enough, sound quality seems to be directly related to how the 
assembly responds to vibrational input from the strings, and observable 
relationships between stiffness and mass and tonal production seem to 
correlate pretty well without an inordinate number of small smoke producing 
demons obscuring the view. It is quite possible to ruin a perfectly good 
piece of wood by cooking the strength out of it, but I think anyone would 
be hard pressed to detect a quantifiable difference between competently 
kiln dried, and air dried spruce in a soundboard.

But that's just my opinion. So what else is new?

Ron N