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My comment has nothing to do with the sound quality. I have already addressed this on the Technicians forum the other day when pianolover asked the same question over there.

My Comment is in regards to your "Someone correct me if I'm wrong" and
"That would mean costly joining and gluing up of small solid wood planks into a panel."

and my post of "Lumber Core Plywood is manufactured from strips of solid lumber, typically basswood. The core is then surfaced and a veneer layer is applied."

They do make a panel of solid wood and then veneer it with Mahogany, Cherry, Rosewood or whatever.

And "The quality of the core lumber is dropping in all but the best of grades."

Steinway and Walter use the best grades.

That's all.

I'm leaving town later today and returning Monday so if you have any comments I will reply when I get back.

Hi Extremus:
I am doing it. It's fun. It's also fun to explore different aspects of piano construction as well. Ten brains from piano folks will certainly more helpful than just mine. I am actually having fun cheking out piano to piano...I am not stress over buying one at all.
Thanks

I agree with Ax here.

The idea that real wood is better for speaker cabinets is completely mistaken. I've worked for a speaker company and know that the engineering aim is to make the cabinet as rigid and nonresonant as possible. Obviously the speaker cone or diaghram is a very different matter. Real wood has grain and the grain has direction, the grain is a lot like strings in terms of resonance. Plywood orients the grains in such a way that they reinforce each other, hence it's more rigid. Particle Board is denser, that's a good thing because higher density means greater inertia and thus is less resonance. For this reason both Plywood and Particle Board are superior as speaker cabinets. In a piano the soundboard is the essentially the diaghram of the speaker and the case is the cabinet. With the exception of Bosendorfer the engineering aim of every other piano manufacturer is for the case to impart as little coloration to the sound as possible. Thus for sonic purposes I believe plywood and MDF or HDF are superior to real wood for piano cases. That's why Ax suggested you listen without preconception to actual pianos.

BWK, it was always my understanding that in speaker cabinets, you want very little sympathetic resonance . For that reason, they have typically been made of composite materials.It was my understanding that you didn't want the enclosure "coloring" the sound so to speak. My speakers are more than a few years old and are composite. My nearly new subwoofer is an audiophile grade unit, but is composite as well.

In pianos, I would assume that there are a couple of issues to ponder. The first consideration would be structural. In other words what is supporting what and how? Or, is it just cosmetic? The second consideration is whether you want to propagate sound, or dissipate sound. Composites will dissipate it, solid wood or plywood will propagate it. This is probably more of an issue with verticals. The bulk of a case of a grand is structural, so the use of wood composites/plywood would be limited to the lid and parts attached to the case, e.g. lid, lyre, music desk and key cover. I have often wondered how the lid in a concert instrument functions, as a reflector/resonator if made of plywood, or the contrary with particle board. The only way to really tell, I would suppose would be to make the same instrument using composites and plywood and have a side by side comparison.

For most folks, I would think that it wouldn't matter much. My worry with the composites is more related to moving the instrument. Composites are notoriously intolerant of impact and bending. I doubt that you will be fixing case parts of composite pianos if damaged, unless they are black.

I doubt that composites would be appropriate for use in violins or acoustical guitars with the exception of the neck in which case plywood is likely the preferred medium. Either plywood or composites could be used in solid-body guitars. The neck will likely remain plywood, the case composite.

A sandwich is an interesting analogy, but decidedly all sandwiches are NOT the same. In composites, MDF for example, just because you add a veneer to it of mahogany as an example, in no way implies that it will resonate. It certainly will not resonate in the same way as solid wood or plywood.

Thanks for the post John.

Could you follow up on that? Let's say we use the same surface mahogany veneer to cover four different sandwich materials. 1) low-density particleboard 2) high-density MDF 3) nine cross-glued plies of thin cheap wood 4) glued up basswood strips such as those that Rod alluded to.

Putting aside momentarily the fact that the resonance of the end panels of the vertical will only be sympathetic, and putting aside the structural integrity issues and the ability to hold screws securely, how are the acoustic resonance characterisitcs going to be different if all four sandwish materials are covered with the same mahogany veneer?

You make an excellent point.

While it sounds logical that solid lumber core would enable better tone that MDF or HDF, I have never heard anything to prove the supposition. In fact, when Yamaha switched to MDF we were dealers. We noticed it 2 years after they started and then only due to a crushing accident.

Put simply William, it would be my belief that either the particleboard or MDF would mostly dampen any resonance afforded by the usually less than .5mm veneer of any kind. Plywood of any kind propagates resonance. I don't think that the veneer would add much to the plywood either. The plywood resonates in and of itself. I don't think that speaker manufacturers have been much concerned with thin veneers over particle board. I have been building speaker enclosures since I was a kid. I have a dinosaur speaker enclosure out in the garage made of plywood, that is darn near impossible to render rattle-free. I also have a PA column made at the same time out of flakeboard that does not have this problem. Just old experiments from 40 years ago.

The question is really not what is economically expedient, but what is sonically ideal? I don't have the answer, and it may vary depending on the application and the goal . As I said previously it likely doesn't matter. It would surprise me greatly if any manufacturers considered this in their design brief.

I really don't have time for this post but what the heck. I'm leaving town in a few hours and I look forward to the comments on my pictures.

I can't say what sounds better. Never heard the same piano built with different materials. So it's all moot.

As a wood worker and piano rebuilder I do know what materials I like to see in anything I have.

You be the judge on what you like.


3 pieces of key bed material removed from different grand pianos for pianodisc installations .


Sample of material from another grand keybed.



Fallboard material from an upright.



Top corner of a damaged brand new upright lid, not a great picture but it is MDF.


Examples of older Schimmel grand cabinet construction, not sure if they are still built this way and this applies to grands only.

Lid material from a 15 year old Korean manufactured grand piano.




There is plywood and then there is plywood. This is the best you can get, rock maple cross banded.

Hi Rod:
You are the man! you proved it. Great pics BTW.
Thanks Rod a lot for sharing your info.
BWKrell

Any grand piano made of flake board or MDF should be disclosed to a buyer..its fine on a DP cabinet
but not a grand.. the only flakeboard furniture I have is my computer desk

Rod, you have a photographer's eye.

Hi Bob: I agree. Consumers should be informed not hiden of what material of any product they are buying.
Thanks

This is one of the reasons I purchased a Walter. While it may not be important to some, it is to me (and guess who holds the checkbook?)

Rod, would you care to disclose the brands represented by your pictures and the approximate production dates? None of this comes as any surprise to me. It gets back to the "you get what you pay for" thing, and then only sometimes. Maybe these instruments should be marketed in the IKEA catalog.

Oh, but of course. Your other post was really helpful John, but now you're back to your acid-tongued self. FWIW, I have Ikea pieces that are eighteen years old that are doing quite well even though they are used daily. Now they weren't exactly cheap, but they weren't priced like furniture showroom stock either. I also have standard issue Home Depot MDF kitchen cabinets that I assembled and installed when I gutted my kitchen ten years ago. There is no peeling veneer, no sagging whatsoever of overburdened shelves, no misalignment of doors, no degradation of surface areas. And yes, they were cheap.

Do you always get what you pay for? I don't think so. Sometimes you get reamed and get far less than you pay for. Sometimes you get considerably more than you might expect.

Rod has shown a number of cross-sections here. Some may be more presentable than others, but if any of them were an exposed edge, it would need to be covered. Rod sells Walter. He can use his basswood strips sealed in veneer as a Walter sales point, but no one (you included) has made a convincing case that engineered MDF or HDF composites have a detrimental effect on the acoustic properties of a vertical when they are used for side panels and lids. It's really up to the individual to decide whether the aesthetic grandeur of soft basswood strips sealed in veneer mandates dismissing pianos like Sauter, Seiler, and Bechstein.

To me, saying that Walter uses only the very best is more like Ricardo Montalban talking about fine Corinthian leather than an independent piano construction expert (say Larry Fine) talking objectively about material choices. (Apologies for the dated analogy. If you're too young to get it, you don't matter. )

Noone said Walter "uses only the very best", it was said that Walter and Steinway do not, and have never used flakeboard, or chipboard in the manufacture of their pianos. This is VERY important to some... like me, and not at all important to others.

Even if a piano made with MDF, and one without sound the same, I would STILL buy the one without. I wouldn't buy a piano made out of flakeboard. Period.

furniture is furniture..after I get my use out of it goes to the Salvation Army! a piano is not furniture! BTW I always liked Ricardo's commercials

from Mahermusic Mahlermusic,

That is not correct. In selectively quoting from waterfront-woods.com, Rod posted the following.

Here is the complete description of that material from waterfront-woods.com. The part that Rod chose to omit is in bold.


In quoting from the same source about MDF, Rod posted the following.


Here is the full description of that material from Rod's source with the portion he chose to omit in bold.


When I posted the missing part about declining quality in lumber-core plywood, Rod commented:
However, Rod did not leave town immediately. He found the time necesssary to post his series of tell-all photographs.

My point is that if any of the cross-sections Rod posted were an exposed edge, it would need to be covered. The rock maple plywood may be top-shelf product, but still you would not leave its cut edge exposed in executing a piece of furniture. The success of any of these panels in building any kind of furniture would depend quite a bit on the success in veneering cut edges in a way that the veneer was seamless and did not chip or begin to peel over time.

Rod mentions that he is a woodworker. I've done woodworking myself and have some knowledge of the relative strengths of these materials in light of their costs. My own opinion is that MDF and HDF are quite different from particleboard in all respects and the use of these materials in vertical piano lids and end panels is a cost efficiency that is not cutting corners with a functional loss. It's perfectly plausible to me that piano manufacturers have gravitated toward MDF composites because of the lack of consistency found in available lumber-core plywood, both in terms of uniformity and product quality. Anyone who shops wood products today whether it be dimensional construction lumber, redwood decking, real wood planks, or plywood panels can attest to the fact that quality of material with the same grade is not uniform. You have to search through a lot of stock to find a few pieces free of any defects.

I have no problem whatsoever with your preference for basswood strips sealed with a wood veneer. I built a floor to ceiling room divider out of top-grade birch ply when MDF would have done the job. I wanted to use 'real wood' even if it was more expensive, and even if it involved hunting through a stack of 4x8 panels to find ones that I found acceptable.

One other comment. If I remember the price you paid for your Walter correctly, I would say that you did not pay any premium for the lumber-core plywood used whereas someone who paid 8 or 9k for the same piano would have. You say that it matters to you and that you wrote the check. That's fine and dandy, but you wrote the check for a piano with a closeout price. How much of a premium would you pay if a Walter piano offered you the same piano in two models: one using MDF core and the more expensive using glued basswood strip core? Would you have paid a .5k premium, a 1k premium, a 2k premium?

William, you have missed the point. I generally don't go apoplectic about vertical construction. I DO however care what is being used in the keybeds of grands. Stability is not the word that I would use for wood composites in structural applications. Truth is,in the absence of hardwood used structurally, I would prefer fiberglass or carbon fiber to wood composites in structural applications. As to sonic properties, it is well known that wood composites attenuate sound. It is a fact whether you like it or not. Can anyone tell the difference? I thought that I said initially that I thought it likely wouldn't make any difference in this application.

If you think that flakeboard is the be all end all in piano construction William have at it. IF you want to re-do your kitchen in flakeboard, have at it. Claiming however that since you can't discern a difference in sound, therefore the instrument is still a quality produced piece is another issue however. Sound is one part of the equation. I think you will have a tough time of it attempting to cajole anyone into believing that flakeboard pianos are the highest quality pianos out there. They do however satisfy a particular buyer at a given pricepoint. For the purpose of clarification, I refer to flakeboard and MDF as wood composites. I do not lump plywood in with these two products. Are you saying that Seiler,Sauter, and Bechstein are using flakeboard and MDF or plywood?

As to the commercial, the purpose in Montalban, was to add gravitas to a product perceived generally by the public to be lacking. In a way it is apt in this discussion as well. Corinthian leather in a New Yorker, and poly finishes over a flakeboard substrate are comparable. The underlying product is nonetheless what it is. YOU apparently are channeling Montalban.

The bottom line as always William is that we have different goals. Your driving force is price. My driving force is quality. They very seldom converge.