Hi Jude. I'm back at the drawing board as well... which is really why I threw out that post. I have my own new project going and I don't expect I'll get much help from the RC&S gang.... at least not much more then they've already posted through the years. I wouldn't really expect any of them to be interested in trying to find out how to pre-dict the strength and stiffness of a compression reliant system as reliably as they feel they can an RS&C system. They are more likely to wish the life of compression reliant systems me thinks... fair enough really. To each their own as it were. As for me tho... I'd like to think there was more to the world of soundboards then just a set of ribs, and a panel that sits on it rather passively no matter what you do to it.... that the world of soundboard construction allows for more possibilities then that one approach allows for. Perhaps I am wrong. So experimentation is of course in order... and its going on all over the place really... tho you only hear of a small portion of it here on pianotech. The RC&S camp has showed a very straightforward and quite evidently workable way of being able to pre-calculate with pretty fair exactingness the strengths characteristics in an RC&S soundboard assembly. It appears to me that CR systems have been arrived at largely empirically and that our understanding of just how these soundboard systems generate their strengths is not nearly so well understood at all. I've yet to run into a solid answer from either camp as to how one can pre-calculate accurately the strengths characteristics of a CR system. Being able to do this seems a pretty tangible direction to go... among other directions one could take. So ... if its a premise you need.... I'm working on the premise that it should be equally possible to pre-calculate CR system strengths as it is RC&S strengths. And if that be true... then we remove entirely from the discussion all issues surrounding the comparative predictability of each type of system. I'm sure your Mason project will yield a lot of increased insights for you. The road goes ever ever on as it were. There is always room for talk... discussion... whilst we carry on each with our own projects. Jogs the mind and helps us on our way. Cheers RicB Hi Ric, I'm still here and still interested. For my part, I ran out of things to talk about so I'm back to the drawing board. I get to a point where I can only learn by getting my hands on some work and hearing the results. To that end, Ron N. and Terry are helping me out with a Mason A6 RC&S design. I'm hoping this experience raises as many questions as it answers; keeps life interesting. Perhaps we should be talking about what controlled experiments we could be conducting to prove, disprove or answer any questions we have. While we need to start with a premise, talk only goes so far, wouldn't you agree? Best, Jude Reveley, RPT Absolute Piano Restoration, LLC Lowell, Massachusetts
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