Piano sounding board cracked ribs

Rlpe piano technician paul hansen is restoring an old mendelssohn upright and gives a little walk through about repairing a soundboard with loose ribs. Once the board has been shaped, it is time to build and attach the new ribs and bridges. The traditional sound board is made of several five eighths thick boards which are glued side by side across the whole inside of the piano. Cracked or fractured ribs are essentially broken ribs, but are not as dangerous as a rib that has broken into pieces, which could pierce vital organs 1. I going to try to fix a crack in the soundboard of my chickering while i have the strings off. There is a crack in my pianos sound board, caused, i believe, by being stored in an arid place. When a piano is restrung it is normal for the soundboard. It picks up the vibration of the strings via the bridges, with a life span determined mostly by the fluctuation and level of humidity over the decades. Eventually the wood gets old and mushy, the felts get stiff and hard, the metal fatigues and breaks, humidity can rust everything, and the wooden exterior can delaminate, buckle, split, warp, and separate. This is done so that the board will not continue to shrink after installation in the piano. Any separation of a rib from the soundboard at a crack is a potential source of buzzing noises. As long as the structure of the soundboard remains solid, with ribs and.

Steinway uses sugar pine ribs, and others will use spruce ribs. Piano soundboards chernobieff piano restorations home. Repairing or replacing a pianos soundboard bradfield piano. Reducing the water content of the wood to a minimal amount before its glued to the rim of the piano helps ensure this. The sound board, depending on the instrument, is called a top plate, table, soundtable, or belly. It is probably the most important part of the piano. This is when the board should be fully inspected and its condition evaluated. In an upright piano, the sound board is a large vertical plate at the back of the instrument. Using patterns from the old board the bridges are reconstructed to proper height and placement for the bridge pins.

The piano tech guys tells me it is not really a problems since the sound board is not seperated from the frame or ribs and isnt causing any significant change to the sound. A cracked sounding board may or may not be serious. I was wondering if someone out there in piano world can help me settle an argument ive been having with a colleague. A pianos soundboard is one of the most important pieces on a piano. Listen to handyczech, he has the same thoughts that i do. For this reason, a crack in the soundboard reduces the soundboard s ability to amplify the vibrations of the strings only in relation to how much of the surface area the crack reduces the vibrating area of the board. No real music can come out of a conventional piano except through the sounding board. It is also one of the main reasons that a cracked soundboard will buzz when played at certain frequencies. The thorough restoration of your piano is a complex and beautiful thing, and at cantabile, no shortcuts are taken. May be cracked or worse yet, may have lost crown to become tonally deficient.

New york city,westchester,long island,connecticut,new jersey. This can result in cracks and loose soundboard ribs. I put the sound board on a piece of plywood, then used clamps to press the ribs onto the sound board while the. If the piano is not buzzing during play, perhaps you may just leave it alone. Salvaging and recycling pianos there is a point of no return for pianos. I need you to take a look at this piano and tell me if i should buy it. Sounding board may be cracked, or worse yet, may have lost its crown to become totally deficient. So youve noticed the soundboard of your piano has a crack.

It would better to find where the cracks cross any ribs and make sure that the board to rib joint is still solid. At times the ribs underneath the piano attached to the sounding board may be. You can glue the board back onto a rib, if they have separated, but that is a much more entailed process. Note the vintage piano owned was a kimball upright the piece so heavy that it took 6 men to move it so yes these pianos metal soundboards were usually replaced to. In this case, consult with a professional piano technician. In contrast, the soundboard that translates their energy into a rich, resonant sound is made of wood. As the vibrations are conducted by the ribs which are at right angles to the planks, the tone is hardly effected unless the soundboard becomes detached from the ribs. Make sure the ribs are not detached from the sound board at all. Clean, dry scrape, relubricate, transfer, glue to new board. Caring for these types of injuries require the same treatment. Hoekstra pianos in christchurch is the sth islands largest piano shop, specializing in near new and reconditioned pianos. All stringed instruments have some type of soundboard most are built directly into the body of the instrument, such as the violin or the harp. Soundboards vary in size depending on how large the piano is.

Thus there persists a common notion that a crack in the wood must in some way cause a. I am a player piano repair man and all of the pianos i work with were made before 1930. Piano soundboard restoration is an exacting and timed honed process. I neglected to cut the profile into the ribs beforehand, but this had the advantage that i can leave the locations where the ribs join all square for more contact area. I had it looked at and i was told the sound board was cracked. It is the best sounding board, but with age, it can crack. However if the ribs break off of the panel, you can see this as a gap between the rib and the board from the bottom or a raised portion along a crack on the top, you can develop some very loud buzzing as the rib, panel and glue residue vibrate against each other. When doing your piano research, i would ask that you suspend judgement about how many support ribs it has, whether its tapered, or hand scraped, or even notched to the inner rim. I cant count the number of times someone has said to me. Many times the crack has opened up and the ribs are not still attached to the board under the rib, so you have to work some glue in there and try to clamp it together again. The sounding board could be cracked or may have lost crown. A flawlessly flat board provides a perfect glue joint surface for the ribs.

The ribs run perpendicular to the grain of the soundboard, and therefore perpendicular to any cracks. The ribs are usually made of spruce, sugar pine, or some other kind of soft wood. The ribs stiffen the soundboard, strengthening the sidetoside gluing of the individual soundboard planks which are only threeeighths of an inch thick. Most being 1921 and most with cracked sound boards. Do upright pianos have a brass sound board answers. Antique and traditional piano soundboard and pinblock repair. The ribs beneath the soundboard must be firmly attached at all points to. As long at the sound board hasnt come unglued from the ribs, there is a good chance you wont even know the difference. The ends of the ribs are tapered to ensure that the edge of the sideboard does not become too rigid. Greeb, the proper repair for the soundboard crack, if warranted, is a spruce shim. They are contained in tight spaces, controlled by the many parts that make up the. Perhaps it looks less like a smooth, machined piece of carpentry and more like a freight pallet. Wagner piano pianos most trusted retailer since 1936.

A piano with a cracked soundboard should be carefully checked for rib separations before purchase. Cracks and rib separations are usually repaired at the same time the piano is restrung. Sometimes when the soundboard gets cracks in it, the ribs come unglued from it in places. What is a sound board how to check your piano sound board. Also for upright pianos, check for signs of water damage along the bottom edge. The significance of soundboard cracks on pianos youtube. Piano sound board repairing cracks the sound board is a five eighths inch thick wooden board in the back of the piano. May be cracked or broken which cripples the piano musically and renders it useless. However, the movers brought it over last week, i played it, and it sounded bad.

Ribs are added to stiffen the board and to help preserve the crown. It had sounded fine at her house, but the acoustics were different in her small living room. I inherited the piano and want to keep it in good shape and fix up the major problems. Ribs are classified into three categories according to their location inside the body. On the back of it, it has one inch ribs which stabilize it by running against the grain of the sound board. So that it will vibrate freely, a sounding board is necessarily a very thin panel, usually from 316 to 38 of an inch thick. Ribs may be broken or pulled away from the soundboard. Bridges that are broken, split or cracked are a major expense to have repaired.

This indicates that the piano could have been in a flood in the past, which could in turn cause rustiness on strings and sounding board cracks. Piano lessons how to buy a piano what is a sound board. The sounding board acts as the speaker of the piano. Like the top of a stradivarius violin, the soundboard is the wood beneath all the strings and plate of the piano which gives it its unique quality of sound. Soundboard cracks pianotech piano technicians guild. Bridges may have lost proper bearing, be broken, split or cracked, necessitating a major expense. It takes an experienced rebuilder to determine if a soundboard needs. Soundboard technology is a much greater science than just a board its a system of acoustics fully integrated with the piano so that the average listener will. If the cracks have been filled with wooden shims, this means that, at some point, the piano was rebuilt and the cracks repaired. After decades of constant pressure from the strings and varying environmental conditions, the soundboard inside of a steinway piano can crack, become loose from the supporting ribs and it may lose its crown. The soundboard is a large, thin wooden plate which acts as an amplifier of the sound produced by the vibrating strings its purpose is to radiate a large volume of sound over a wide frequency range. Sounding board may be cracked or worse yet, may have lost crown to become tonally deficient. Ribs with natural internal stresses will arch into a 60 radius arch.

The sounding board reflects and amplifies the tone caused when a hammer hits a string. In a grand piano, the sound board is part of the case. May be cracked or worse yet, may have lost its crown to become tonally deficient. As long as the edges of the crack do not make a rattling sound by vibrating, it really isnt that problematic. Each panel comes out dead flat and needing no further sanding. Broken, cracked and bruised ribs exhibit similar symptoms, although broken and fractured ribs will hurt a good deal more than bruised ribs and will take much longer to heal 1. How costly is it to fixed a cracked sound board in a piano. If splits in the soundboard do produce certain rattling or vibrating sounds, it is enough to place a wedge in the crack, otherwise, one must send the piano to a factory or repair shop to have the sound board replaced or properly repaired. To know the symptoms of a cracked rib, first we need to know a little about the ribs and what causes a cracked or fractured rib. Underneath the soundboard panel are the ribs which move the energy across the grain of the panel and support the crown or upward bowing of. When an original soundboard needs restoration, we evaluate the board to ensure structural integrity, hand sand it and repair any damage utilizing our special methods. Graymarket pianos and cracked soundboards pianobuyer.

If you open up the lid of either your upright or grand piano and look down, you will see a shiny piece of wood that runs the down the back or the bottom of the instrument. Salvaging and recycling pianos petrichs piano shop. I purchased an old upright kimball piano from a lady across town. Base strings may be tired and tubey totally devoid of tone. He maintains that a piano is simply untunable if a cracked sound board exists, while i posit that it is possible to tune a piano with a cracked sound board. Do i need to be very worried if i find cracks in the sound board of a very old piano. I want to be sure the soundboard isnt crackedi dont want a. The sides of the crack are touching or almost touching, but are displaced vertically about an eight of an inch. Avoid like the plague any piano with pins that have apparently been pounded. Ribs could be broken or pulled away from the soundboard. The bridges function is primarily to transmit the sound of the strings to the soundboard, which is the.

This can allow the soundboard to rattle against the loose rib as it. The upper ribs are protected by the collarbone and shoulder blades. If it were only a matter of loudly amplifying the sound produced when the hammers strike the strings, a metal plate would have been much more efficient. Robert estrins tips on purchasing a piano music vision studios. When choosing whether to repair or replace your soundboard, its important to consider the level of damage. The heart and soul of your piano is its soundboard. Bass strings may be tired and tubby, totally devoid of tone. The sound board is a five eighths inch thick wooden board in the back of the piano. Like a hifi speaker, a sounding board is a vibrating diaphragm. I dont think my piano is worth anythingthe soundboard is cracked. Like the speaker of a radio, a pianos sounding board is a vibrating diaphragm. Even a very bad board will still act as a transducer.