Belly rail crown - Why???

[Ron Nossaman]

>     Well I'll give it back to then. What do you think they were after in 
> that experiment? Market fluff? It's an honest question.

No, I think what I said I thought. They were making these subjective 
evaluations on exclusively compression crowned boards, over a short period 
of time. They didn't apparently explore beyond compression crowning, nor 
take any long term structural penalty of their modifications into account. 
By restricting themselves to narrow modifications of the original 
configuration, they severely limited their own potential for making 
improvements.



>      Factory workers would get it if it was coming down the line.Well 
> ,Recently I heard John Patton had said that When he worked at Mason 
> Hamlin that the pianos that recieved there bellys and were immediately 
> strung without sitting around for a while always sounded better to him. 
> Now as to why that may or may not be is not the my point but he did have 
> an opinion. To say someone as sensitive as a voicer wouldn't notice a 
> difference if something indeed had changed in the belly department is for 
> me  not logical. This point amounts to a spittin contest Ron

You're still not getting it. Familiarity with only one manufacturer's 
soundboards doesn't qualify anyone for choosing between the method they 
work with every day at that manufacturing facility, and another quite 
possibly superior method that isn't practiced at the facility in which they 
work. Compression crowned soundboard assemblers and installers would never 
get the chance to compare their results (especially long term results) with 
those obtained with rib crowned boards. That is the old/new I'm talking 
about. Now I'm not getting it. What are you talking about?


>       If I've got a panel that's overly thick for a given size a piano. 
> i. e. a .375 or more sikta panel in an M or L ,I consider that to thick 
> all over as well for a smaller piano. A .340 ish treble thickness would 
> do fine. I've heard thinner that were good as well. What specs. are you 
> shooting for?

I haven't had a chance to put one of my boards in anything over 7', but I'm 
using 8mm (0.314") in everything under 7'. I'm not altogether convinced a 
primarily rib crowned board needs a thick panel. I am pretty well convinced 
that a compression crowned board, or primarily compression crowned board 
does, from about the middle of the scale on up.

Ron N