Soundboard Resonces and the Wogram Article

Erwinspiano@aol.com Erwinspiano@aol.com
Sat, 4 Feb 2006 13:20:20 EST


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David
  I just read the article as well & had the exact same  questions.  
Experientially what this potentially creates is a less chaotic  board movementwhich 
translates into what my ear describes as a cleaner, more  focused homogenous 
sound accompanied by increased sustain.  So that  being said, & however we define 
whatever it.. is, the effect, is  something that a whole bunch of people seem 
to enjoy.  These assumptions  have a merit.  With the bass cut off bar 
installed I have thought of it as  the ribs being more of equidistant length tend to 
move in unison as do equal  lengths of  3 string plain wire unison ecomomizing 
energy & movement.  Makes sense to me especially after seeing the modes of 
movement in these  board.
 
  Dale Erwin

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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