http://www.speech.kth.se/music/5_lectures/wogram/ribbing.html After reading the Wogram article, in particular the part on soundboard resonances, I'd be curious to hear from soundboard designers how this relates to the construction of bass cut-offs. From a purely empirical point of view, the bass cutoff (and there may be other factors but let's leave it at this single issue for the moment) seems to make the tone much cleaner, purer, if you will. After looking at the digrams of modal analysis and wondering about the distortions in the bass corner that appear, I can only imagine that with a full bass cutoff, those diagrams would be somewhat different, more uniform, less chaotic. But my question has more to do with what the consequence are for the overall tonal impression of the piano between the two systems. If the board without the cutoff gives rise to some more random pattern of resonances, might not that translate to a somewhat more random or, expressed differently, more complex sounding tone in the piano. While controlling random resonances on the surface of it seems like a good thing, might it not have the effect of making the piano, to some ears, sound somewhat too pure or somewhat more sterile. Now I'm not suggesting that's the case, btw, I'm just wondering if I'm reading these diagrams correctly and what this means in terms of the choices about to cutoff or not to cutoff. David Love davidlovepianos@comcast.net
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