At 20:27 -0500 19/9/10, Ron Nossaman wrote: >On 9/19/2010 7:48 PM, Roger Gable wrote: >>...Is there a top quality piano using laminated bridges? I think not. > >Not that I know of. There's nothing at all inherently sub standard >about horizontally laminated bridges, except the waste cutting them >out of bigger panels... Hmm. You're all talking exclusively of horizontally laminated bridges I presume and not vertically laminated as used by Steinway? I'd need to have more detailed evidence and analysis than a few expressions of opinion to convince me... ... but with regard to the Delignit bridge-capping material, I'd like to hear a fuller description of this than I see in Schaff's catalogue. Is it of beech? How thick are the laminations? Is the wood impregnated to render it harder? I can imagine that laminated hornbeam might be very effective. The trouble with solid hornbeam, as I know from trying it, is that it has hardly any give and can easily split. I have seen hornbeam capping occasionally in the treble of some pianos, and certain high-class makers used boxwood for the top section, but that is now impossible to obtain at an economic price. When you cap the bridge with the Delignit stuff do you do the whole bridge or just the top section plus? Even the very finest of piano-makers from the good old days seem to have seen no virtue in using the harder bridge top below a certain point in the scale. JD
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