Ahem ahem... I think you are refering more to those of our past patients that have suffered rather serioius encounters with extremes of climatic situations and have had all or part of their soundboards turned inside out. Yes... I will go along with you there... a trashed board is a trashed board. But compression set alone doesnt cause this IMHO. A panel can also live a wonderful climatic life and see its panel slowly compressed to near flat, with little remaining upwards push on the strings. These can sound very nice indeed and I know for sure there are a whole heck of a lot of people out there that agree. On the side... I just got done re-reading this Finish study on wood ageing done in conjunction with a company developing a thermal process for ageing of wood for use in musical instruments. This, and a few other resources state that as wood ages it in itself tends to get stiffer... eventually to the point of being brittle. So, while its true that a soundboard assembly will loose some of its stiffness as a result of years of compression set, its also true that it will gain some of that as part of getting old. But more to the origional point... since the subject was the removal of origional ribs for recrowning of the panel itself via the rib crowning method... it would seem to me that such an old panel would be stiffer then a similiarilly rib crowned new panel where all else is equal. Then too.. since the old panel has had years of exposure to climatic change and compression set has lessened its ability to react to climatic changes... it would seem that it should result in a more stable soundboard assembly. PLUS... the only cost is the cost of careful removal from the instrument. As I've said several times... I've seen a few fellow over here demonstrate how to do this, and I've done it twice myself on squares now.... and its really not such a big deal. Personally... I dont really see a down side to all this... :) Cheers RicB Farrell wrote: >Ahem, I think the word was "personality", which I believe might span the >gamut from "positive personality trait" to "personality defect". "Charm" >might be a bit overly positive. > >Terry Farrell > > > >>I can agree with the last bit of your last statement to a degree >>tho.... from a qualitative point of view... yes its hard to judge >>whether a 64, 94, or 1894 are different. All, as you say... have their >>own charm. >> >>Cheers >>RicB >> >> > > >_______________________________________________ >pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives > > >
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