Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum FYI. Hailun Soundboard answer...

This type of laminated soundboard has been around a long time. Samick has been doing this type of board on all of their low end pianos since the mid 1980s. I have sold many samicks with the thin layer with solid layer in the middle laminated boards. They tried to call it a moisture barrier or some other type of marketing lingo. This is all Hailun is doing as well. The better and more expensive Kohler and Campbell pianos used the same scale but gave you a solid spruce soundboard. Your right that there is nothing wrong with this, but it is done not to improve upon the product, but to create a more profitable piano for the manufacturer. Guitar players know this as well, A solid spruce top of a guitar is better than a laminate. It just translates the sound better. If Hailun feels they want to enter at a lower price point and cut costs why not in this economy.

Norbert,

If you feel a meniscus coating accurately describes Hailun's use of thin wood panels to sandwich the core, then I would concede that it's better than nothing. I suppose it's ancient history now, but scroll back to when you were selling 178's branded as Steigerman Premium, the Steigerman webiste was pimping solid boards -- no meniscus, no skin, no thin top or bottom panel. So I guess from that perspective, we can all celebrate Hailun's new-found transparency , while also conceding that their laminate board pianos cannot be faulted in the way that the ones cited by Jurgen could be faulted..

Jurgen,

I hadn't thought about it from your angle, but you are right. The shortcomings of the laminates of that generation are part of the reluctance to advance the cause today.