Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Question about piano material

Is it common practice to build rim with maple and basswood? I know maple is very good hardwood, but isn't basswood really soft?

Most rims are made of hardwoods: maple, birch, beech, oak, lauan, walnut, or other locally available, suitable material. Based on the common uses for basswood, I would assume its role in rim construction was for ornamental elements, not structural. Not all pianos design around hardwood rims, most notable Bosendorfer which makes their rims out of spruce.

However, in general, I would not make a judgment about a piano for any one design element. Think of it as part of the recipe. For some recipes, an ingredient is appropriate and for others it is not. The inclusion of basswood in the design doesn't say much about how or why.

Also, whether a type of wood is designated "hardwood" has little to do with its hardness. It has to do with whether it has leaves or needles. Wikipedia - Hardwood

Pianos designed around dense hardwood rims (maple, oak, birch, etc.) tend to have different characteristics than those designed around more moderate (lauan) or less dense (spruce) rims, but still this is just an ingredient in the recipe. It's the final result that can make for strong opinions one way or another.

I had similar concerns over the use of basswood. Not sure how long it has been done, but time will tell whether it is a good solution I suppose.

Thanks for your explanation, Sam. I am not trying to judge on a piano for this element. I am just doing research in my piano exploration journey. Be more specific, in the Hailun 178 spec I read, it states inner&outer rim are made of multi-laminate Map & Basswood. Does it mean that both inner&outer rims are made of laminate wood with one layer of maple and one layer of basswood, or it means the inner rim is made of maple laminate and outer rim is made of basswood?

In HG198 spec, it clearly exclaimed that rims are made of alternating maple/walnut laminate. It makes more sense since both maple and walnut are hardwood.

Hello youngzi,
Your question can be answered on Monday as I ask Hailun people. What I do know is that the 198 piano is designed with better materials, such as a soundboard and hammers from Germany. It also has many other design improvements such as in the soundboard, bridges, and strings. The 198 is a newer design and is designed to compete with the finest German pianos and to be better than other Asian pianos.

The 178 was designed earlier and is a very nice design with very good materials. The extra price of a 198 brings with it many improvements including a better rim. If you would like to meet with me in the store I can go over each of these.

Thanks

Today I had a long conversation with Frank Emerson who is the chief engineer and piano designer at Hailun. He previously had similar jobs at Mason and Hamlin and Baldwin. We covered several topics which are of interest to those who want to know how Hailun pianos are constructed and as to why they sound as wonderful as they do.

Youngzi asked about the rim materials of Hailun pianos.
1) The 178 and smaller pianos have hard maple outer rims. The smaller inner rim is made of a softer Asian basswood. This inner rim has maple inserts made into the basswood in places where bolts will be put into the rim. These harder maple inserts keep the screws from ever getting loose.
2) The 198 and larger Hailun pianos have maple outer rims and walnut inner rims and do not need the inserts. This is part of the expense of the larger pianos.
3) The rim wood material, and the size and strength of the rims, are only one feature of the sound and quality of the piano. However more expensive pianos usually have harder rims and thicker and stronger rims.
4) Another quality feature is the size and strength of the large boards beneath the soundboard. The more massive the beams are then the stronger the piano is, the more stable the soundboard is, and the more rigid the piano is --- with benefits including giving a better higher treble of the piano.
5) Frank said that the very high quality of the tone and sound of the Hailun pianos comes more from things other than the rim materials and structure. The soundboard materials and design, the string scale designs, the rib scales, and the hammers contribute more than the rims.
6) For instance the soundboards are rib crowned like European pianos instead of being compression crowned like Yamaha, Steinway, and many pianos. This allows the crown to be designed more carefully and help the soundboard to keep its tone and the piano tuning stability better even through changing humidity conditions and years.
7) the Hailun soundboard material is a solid spruce core which gives the very good tone, and then there are carefully designed laminations on the top and bottom to create greater life, stability, and to prevent cracking and loss of crown.
8) The quality of a piano and its pleasing tone is far more than the specifications. The care full design and prototype testing makes greater differences. To that end pianos like Hailun which go through periodic improvements in design can keep getting better and better. He believes that his work is a continual process of creating better designs and better pianos.

I believe this. I equate this to the many things that I have read and heard about Estonia, Petrof, Steingraeber, Schimmel, and others which have been working hard year after year to improve their pianos in design and materials and building processes.

That's some marketing spiel you have there!

fingers

Don't get me wrong, I am impressed with the results of the Hailun, and the craftsmanship of the parts I looked at (action). While there were some compromises I saw, they seemed to be reasonable. For example, the bolts that hold the two keyboard endplates down were not as thick as found on other pianos I looked at, yet they seemed to still be stronger than necessary. They also seemed to mate with a nut or a threaded piece of metal functioning as a nut, embedded in the end butts. This seemed superior to me, a lay person, than other designs I've looked at that used very thick wood screws into the keyboard end butts. (My terminology should make it abundantly clear that I am a layperson:). I am not a piano technician, or piano player, so take that with a grain of salt. Even so, Hailun does seem to be the best made Chinese piano I looked at, and I recently wrote a very positive review from a layman’s perspective.

I am also not a cabinet maker, but the use of basswood concerns me even more after reading what you wrote, Gary. The salesperson I spoke with was completely upfront on materials used in a hailun piano, but I think in general the use of basswood will raise eyebrows among consumers, even if it there was a good reason to use it.

I do thank you for taking the time to dig in, and type up your findings, though. I have purchased some Chinese made furniture for my son's room in the past, and while it is still functional, I don't think it is heirloom quality. There are two components to my estimations. The construction isn't great. And, it is made from basswood. Remember, I'm talking about consumer grade furniture in my son's room. I knew this when I bought it, though, and decided I would rather acquire functional furniture for my son than to sit and worry about him damaging higher quality furniture.

What's wrong with the basswood? It is easily gouged for one thing, and doesn't seem to hold its finish well for another. How does it hold laminate glues when used to make a rim, I wonder?

Granted, I am not an expert at these things, and some of what I spew here may just be I don't like the wood.

Ultimately, if basswood was selected as a cost saving engineering compromise that's too bad. It seems less expensive labor and reasonable shipping costs should leave room for quality material. How much money is saved by using a mixture of basswood and maple?

Now, if basswood were selected because it sounded better, lasted longer, resisted humidity, laminated better, etc., even though it cost more, the sell would be easier.

Using a mixture of woods to construct the rim also makes me wonder about the relative thermal expansion coefficients, as well as their relative reaction to changes in humidity. Could this possibly lead to stresses in the rim in response to temperature and humidity changes found in a normal home?

To be clear, I am no basher of Chinese goods, Chinese manufacturing, or economical compromises. I do think it is fair to say that many Chinese manufacturers are still learning quality control, and have been going through the same growing pains Japanese manufacturers went through during the 1970s. And it looks to me that Hailun is further along that path than others.

But it would be good, from an engineering perspective, to know if Hailun has done any highly accelerated life testing (HALT) on their rims (and other components) in order to better estimate how their solution/compromise/material selection will hold out in the long run.

One other thing, if you have feedback to engineers at Hailun, suggest they look at a book by Gregg K. Hobbs titled "Accelerated Reliability Engineering: HALT and HASS" Other books on the topic also exist.

The methods described in the books can be used to make products that last a very long time. (Sadly, a lot of manufacturers of goods, any goods, are producing disposable goods these days.)

But a piano, which I consider a long life good, could benefit from the ideas in the books.

As an example, I have a calculator made in 1989, designed and manufactured by HP. My understanding is that they used HALT/HASS methods to design and manufacture it. And it turned out very well, in the sense that the calculator I am using has been dropped three to four feet onto tiled concrete several times throughout its long life, and doesn't have so much as a crack on it, and is still a workhorse. I have read stories about these calculators being set on the roofs of cars, with the car driving off, and the calculator falling to the pavement, and then being run over by another car, and still working.


Today, calculators are 1/3 the cost, but have 1/4 the useful life. There are trade-offs here, in that newer calculators have better, faster, lower power electronics. Whether or not applying HALT/HASS to a scientific calculator is a good idea today is debatable, and the evidence points to the fact that calculators that can last 30 years won't be bought by price conscious end users.

But as far as a piano goes, using HALT on a piano rim using mixed materials may be beneficial from a marketing perspective and a warranty perspective, since pianos are expected to last longer than 4 or 5 years.

First of all, basswood is a hardwood. So is balsa, for that matter. The difference between hardwoods and softwoods is that hardwoods come from deciduous trees and softwoods come from conifers. Where different species of woods lie in the range of actual hardness does not depend on whether it is a hardwood or softwood. They are interwoven on the scale. Balsa is very soft. Yew, a softwood, is very hard.

Basswood is one of the softer woods, but it is similar to poplar, which is widely used for cabinet wood. Both of them carve and machine very well. Like most woods, they hold up very well. There should be no problem with them lasting the life of the piano.

As to how well a given wood works for its role in the piano, that is a function both of the species of wood and the design of the piano. Ultimately, you have to judge a piano by how it sounds.

Hello yumo,

I think it is just fine to raise these questions but I'll add some perspective.

From the time this forum started until about 3 years ago, there were regular questions about Bosendorfer's use of spruce in their rims (it took all those years for this community to deride those questions as FUD). Competitors were known to poke at this element of construction like it was a bad thing. The same things you notice about your son's basswood furniture could be noticed if they were made out of spruce. Materials science is all about appropriate application.

It's kind of like that that formerly popular allegation that "Kawai uses those cheap plastic parts." It's not so popular to try and criticize that anymore because they are open for people to see, compare and decide.

Outside of piano making, Lauan is primarily used as cheap plywood. Wikipedia calls it Mixed Hardwood Ply, i.e. wood of unknown origin, however it is used without complaint in Yamaha, Kawai and other brands. I wouldn't want a coffee table made of Lauan, but my first piano was a Yamaha and I know the customer who still owns it, is happy, and never had a question about the cabinet materials.

In general, I think Asian manufacturers have been much more open to the public about sourcing of parts, labor, design than almost any American or European maker. The info you ask for may or may not be available, but try asking the same questions to one of several venerable U.S. makers and see what kind of vague response you get if any at all.

At some point, I'll have to ask a Hailun designer why basswood was chosen out of a tremendous number of expensive & inexpensive wood types. I think that is the most appropriate question.

By the way, do you know why NY Steinway uses maple and why Hamburg used more beech? The original reason is that it was a locally available suitable material. It wasn't until probably 100 years later that they studied how it specifically contributes to the instrument. Science confirmed what they already knew. A lot of instrument design is like that.

Yumo. The large and chief stress bearing of the rim is the outer rim from which you see as the outer case. The inner rim is the rim upon which the soundboard sits upon. It is part of the inner structure. Most pianos use different woods for the inner and outer rims. Both of these rims are shaped like arches and because of this are very strong.

In my conversation with Frank Emerson yesterday he was talking about this very thing.

Please remember that the smaller Hailun pianos are the ones which use the basswood and maple insert inner rims. These sell for less than $15,000. The larger, and therefore needing greater strength, pianos use more massive rims and a harder inner rim wood.

Also these pianos are designed by men who have designed very well constructed and long lasting pianos before they came to Hailun. The smaller Hailun pianos were designed by Japenese designers who came from the top companies there. They worked to design their best pianos. The larger pianos were designed by the American, Frank Emerson, and the Frenchman, Stephen Pauello. They have put their names upon the pianos as their greatest designs.

Another thing that I have learned which makes the Hailun pianos sound different than the Japanese pianos is the type of soundboard. All of the European pianos that I know of use rim crowning as the method of building the soundboard. Steinway, Yamaha, and others use a less expensive and less precise method of compression crowning. Hailun uses the better rib crowning.

Rib crowning was the difference between the Kemble upright pianos and the almost exactly same Yamaha uprights. These were made in the same Yamaha owned English factory. By changing the soundboard to rib crowning, Kemble created a more warm and rich sound.

People who come into our store can learn about he different soundboard building methods and the new crown designs. For instance the Petrof new designs have a more complex crown design which creats a more even and rich sound accross the whole piano. (than the older Petrof designs.)

One of the added features of the larger Hailun pianos is a new football shaped crown instead of a basketball shaped crown on the soundboard, which most pianos use. These new shapes of crown allow the crest of the crown to run more along the treble bridge and allow more of the piano to benefit by the idea that the best sounding notes are centered over the crest of the crown.

Some of you may remember that Bluthner uses a cylinder shaped crown which has the crest of the crown running down the majority of the treble bridge.
But don't fret if you don't know what all this means.

Gary,

"7) the Hailun soundboard material is a solid spruce core which gives the very good tone, and then there are carefully designed laminations on the top and bottom to create greater life, stability, and to prevent cracking and loss of crown."

Hailun sound boards are laminated?


Mike

Why not? A lot of FUD has been spread over the years on this forum about this.
But what would be against it when well excecuted.

Del posted a lot about this subject; this is just one thread where Del comments on laminated soundboards in multible posts:

All other things being equal..

schwammerl.

Yes Mike, they are on the smaller grands. This method has been proven to work very well. That is why they can offer such a long warranty. And as well talked about earlier, Hailun has about the best warranty anywhere and 3 times some of the big name brands.

Thanks Gary. It's not a fact Hailun makes overly clear in their brochure. At least not if you just skim over the material. Which models have the laminated sound board?


Mike

Sorry to jump in, but I was just covering this topic:

In a nutshell, the soundboard has a traditionally made solid spruce soundboard which serves as the core. On the uprights, 1 very thin Spruce lamination is applied to the solid core at a slight angle to the core grain. This allows the soundboard to perform well around the world in different climates. The grand soundboards have top and bottom laminations over the core. To better understand, the laminations are about 1/12th or .0833% of the thickness of the solid spruce core. This is on models 151, 161, 178.

The selection of Strunz soundboards for the larger performance instruments coincides with all traditionally high quality soundboards but are therefore more environmentally sensitive and require a good, stable indoor climate.

Soundboard design is important for any piano, but I think Hailun's choice to use laminated soundboards acknowledges the greater importance for durability in a home piano (in homes around the world) over the marginal improvement that could be accomplished by using Strunz in every model. On the larger instruments that are more likely to be used in a performance venue, the justification is different.

Thanks, Sam and Gary. It makes sense.

Strange they would sweep it under the rug. The piano business seems very tradition bound.

Thanks for the Wiki link about Hardwoods. They have a pretty good article about Tilia species:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basswood . Some of them are known by the common name 'basswood,' and are used in making guitars and other musical instruments (which I did not know), as well as window blinds (which I did know, because I have some).

An excerpt:

"The timber of Tilia trees is soft, easily worked, and has very little grain, and a density of 560kg per cubic metre.[4] It is a popular wood for model building and intricate carving. Especially in Germany, it was the classic wood for sculpture from the Middle Ages onwards, and is the material for the elaborate altarpieces of Veit Stoss, Tilman Riemenschneider and many others. Ease of working and good acoustic properties also make it popular for electric guitar and bass bodies and wind instruments such as recorders. In the past, it was typically used (along with Agathis) for less-expensive models. However, due to its better resonance at mid and high frequency, and better sustain than alder, it is now more commonly in use with the "superstrat" type of guitar. It can also be used for the neck because of its excellent material integrity when bent and ability to produce consistent tone without any dead spots according to Parker Guitars. In the percussion industry, Tilia is sometimes used as a material for drum shells, both to enhance their sound and their aesthetics. It is also the wood of choice for the window-blinds and shutters industries. Real wood blinds are often made from this lightweight but strong and stable wood which is well suited to natural and stained finishes.
[Limewood Saint George by Tilman Riemenschneider, c. 1490.]"

Species in the genus Tilia were formerly classified in the taxonomic family Tiliaceae, but genetic studies have shown in recent years that there is good reason to move it into the mallow family, Malvaceae. This classifies it closer to its relatives okra, hibiscus, and cacao (chocolate).

Plants are classified mainly according to their sex organs (the flowers), rather than by their form.