Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Wet Sand Casting versus "V-Pro" Casting for Piano Harps

As far as I know, all bug spray is made for humans. I mean, non-human animals wouldn't have the required opposable thumbs or know how to use it anyway.

That’s interesting. I must have missed that. Why hasn’t anyone taken an electron microscope to the metal to see if such crystals exist?

Good point . But I’m trying to find some that actually wards off humans.

Pepper spray?

Might be less problematic to just try being friendlier. You know, kill ‘em with kindness. Or catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But people who always have to be the “smartest” guy in the room, tend to rub others the wrong way.

There are many explanations of why one may observe anecdotally why piano strings fail more often in V-pro casted plates over casted plates- if one was to actually observe this to be the case. A simple explanation would be given the fact that there are more V-pro cast pianos in use there are more strings can be observed to break but the ratio between sand casted versus v-pro casted string breaks is actually the same. Another simple explanation could be that given that v-pro plated pianos tend to be cheaper they may be housed in less than ideal climate controlled environments than typically the more expensive high end sand casted pianos allowing for corrosion to set in lowering the yield strength of the metal strings in these pianos. Another explanation may be that Ed is right but given that this is not a widely accepted explanation and can lead to inflammatory statements from certain salesmen trying to outsell their competition, he really needs to test his theory before stating it as fact where all factors are controlled including the ones I just mentioned above.

Good grief. Now you’re making fun of chiropractors...?

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s self deprecation!

I always try to kill people with kindness but it doesn’t appear to be working on the “smartest” guy in the room who always needs to be right by obsessively trying to prove the “kindest” guy in the room wrong.

Ha, I’ve assumed many roles in my life and I’m pretty sure chiropractor is not one of them.

Something straight out of the movie Aliens.

But then again, why is the C7 the most popular piano on the planet?

So...you are making fun of chiropractors?

I guess that leaves physical therapist.

They should rename that, ‘Retsacnal’s Theme”.

People find the harsh tone in the treble useful for annoying neighbors and the constant string breakage appeals to the DIY crowd and makes people feel cool that they are breaking strings like that guy in Shine.

Which also shows you why you need to be careful with those Rachmaninov concertos unlike that guy in Shine.

I’d love to have a Gershwin tune named after me. Of course, Gershwin would be smart enough to spell it right.

Fortunately, my piano is only suitable for early classical so there is very little chance of string breakage.

My knowledge is more of steel casting than iron but I believe the difference in cooling times is primarily due to production process i.e. the vacuum cast frames can, for the same strength, be lighter in construction and more accurately cast with fewer internal stresses that have to be resolved before removing from the mold. These factors all enable the frame to be more quickly removed from the mold and cooled if desired - and as time is money, it probably is desired.

Interestingly you can after unmolding subsequently heat treat and slow cool cast items, from either process, to increase ductility of the iron which if anyone ever takes that extra step might give softer V bars. At another increase in expenditure of course.

And I think that is one area where a sand casted plate may have an advantage over the V-pro acoustically speaking. A good plate to my understanding is able to take the tons of pressure placed upon it by the string tension and at the same time ideally does not add any unwanted resonances of its own. Though lighter in weight the V-pro is just as strong to take the tons of pressure placed upon it but not hefty enough to eliminate all unwanted resonances. Heavy is good if you to dampen unwanted frequencies. This is my opinion only but there might not be any truth to it so I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this.

Possibly, depending on the manufacturing compromises, it is not black and white. If a V-pro plate is cast to the same strength as a sand plate it will be lighter. However there is nothing stopping you casting a V-pro plate to the same weight as the sand plates which would be substantially stronger and (presumably) just as good acoustically. And between those two extremes the V-pro plate might have an infinite number of compromises depending on just how much money you want to put into the overengineering beyond the necessary strength. But this is all speculation anyway, nobody has demonstrated properly, as far as I'm aware, that a sandcast plate actually has sonic advantages over a V-pro.