>To soundboard installers out there. Are there any books specifically >related to soundboard installation/design? The only thing I know of is Fenner's book. If an English translation was available, I'd buy it. I find enough to disagree with in the drawings I've seen to be very interested in reading the explanations behind them. Nearly everything I've read about soundboards through the years has ranged from dubious to mystic to downright wrong. The information Del has provided has been the only source I ever found that I would call reliable, rational, scientifically valid, practical, and demonstrable in actual pianos. >I tend to get into projects, and >find myself immersed in it. I need to learn all I can. I'm not interested >in general repair books. I have them. Specifics on the properties of wood as an engineering material are more informative and useful than the general repair books. Be warned though. It's a kit, with conclusions not included. There's a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, and a measure of blood between the raw information and the weeding out of all the junk we've been taught about soundboards. I recommend "The Encyclopedia of Wood", AKA "Wood Handbook: Wood as an Engineering Material", and "Understanding Wood", by R. Bruce Hoadley. The Wood Handbook is available on line as a series of PDFs, but I find the actual book to be more to my liking. I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of various technical books on engineering mechanics and strength of materials. Marks "Mechanical Engineers Handbook" and "Machinery's Handbook" have been less handy for soundboards (other than beam deflection and arc height formulas), but very handy for some of the other trips into the mechanics and physics of things piano. > I don't >have access to his Journal Articles from the late 90's. You should have. The Journal CDs are worth the price. >Ron...I know you and Del are like two peas in a pod (I mean that >affectionately). Do you have any suggestions? I know I'll never get better >at this if I don't ask. Yes. Get the Journal articles, get the books, and start reading. Learn about wood. Get the basic education base from which to judge the things you don't know. Depend less on what this guy said and what that guy said and more on the science and physics of the materials involved. Keep it as simple as possible, and try to understand the basic structural requirements before you go off in chase of wave theory and tiny smoke emitting demons - which are legion. Try not to form conclusions without facts. Learn about scaling too, and try to correlate what you see in pianos to what you hear. The correlations are there, but you have to work from a knowledge base, rather than isolated random belief or "I've been told". Understand what you think and have reasons for your opinions and conclusions. Distrust your own conclusions and re-explore your thinking from other directions constantly. Not eventually, but constantly. What you know about what you've always known will and should be in a constant state of change as you assimilate new information and experience and update your reality. When something doesn't make sense, don't accept is as magic that just is. Check your premise and verify your assumptions. There will always be things you want to know but don't yet have the means to know. Keep digging and some of these will come. With everything you learn, something that didn't have an answer should be closer to being understood. The only hope of making this work is to KEEP IT SIMPLE and not try to fit 796 unsubstantiated rumors and un quantified variables into the equation at once. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work, and doesn't apparently ever stop. Ron N
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