Engineered Soundboard, was: DC

[Farrell]

WOW! That's a pretty strong statement Armond. What kind of pianos have your been servicing? Are your 90 year old compression crowned soundboards "engineered" to have proper curve (flat?) at 42% RH? I might agree that you are headed in the right direction in a perfect and highly idealized world, but in the real world optimal environmental conditions are going to be piano-specific, and may in fact vary quite a bit from 42% RH. Prime factors would be age and deterioration of the soundboard, and the amount of "engineering" that originally went into the soundboard design. From what I am figuring out about this industry, very few soundboard designs have much engineering involved.

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Armond" <armond@snip.net>
To: "Pianotech" <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 8:03 AM
Subject: Re: DC


> the thing is, soundboards, or real ones anyway, create the proper tone and
> curve at 42% humidity.  the string tension against the board when strings
> are tuned at 440cps., also is engineerd to the proper curve in the
> soundboard.  therefore, all soundboards should be kept at 42% relative
> humidty.  granted the DC systems are not the best way to do this, but by far
> the practical way to, and are necessary and there are no different opions on
> the subject because piano engineering is mathematical and physical science.
> 
> Armond