Pianotech

Anyone know what the maximum thickness (middle) of a ca. 1875 Broadwood Superior Parlor Grand  8' 3" should be?  Rebuilder seems to have made the board almost

 12mm  thick.  Tone is dead. 

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Parker Leigh RPT
Winchester VA
(540) 722-3865
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Its not just the thickness that can ruin the tone.Any single step of the design and installation process can be wrong and the tone can be dead. Two points:

One, i'd get the old board back. 1/2" is on the thick side. Thats usually raw panel thickness, so they either didn't have the ability to thin a panel or didn't care to take the time to.

Two, these older boards are not modern compression boards, they had to go with the inferior method of adding an artificial crown. But more important than that, they have to be installed in a special way to create tension along the grain. 99% of rebuilders don't know that, let alone how to do it. 

-chris

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Chernobieff Piano Restorations

Inventor of Inertia Touch Wave (ITW)
Advanced Resonant Compression Engineered Soundboards (ARCHES)

865-986-7720 (text only please)
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Pianos of that era usually had small and light hammers, and correspondingly very thin soundboards, compared to what we tend to see today. I can't say for sure for an 8'3" piano but I know parlor sized pianos often had soundboards in the 6 mm range.
It doesn't sound like the rebuilder took a close look and measurements in order to faithfully reconstruct what was originally there. Pity. Now what - juice the hammers??

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Jurgen Goering
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I would agree that 8mm is more appropriate.  Ribbing seems heavy as well.  

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Parker Leigh RPT
Winchester VA
(540) 722-3865
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-10-2025 11:11
From: Jurgen Goering
Subject: Soundboard Thickness

Pianos of that era usually had small and light hammers, and correspondingly very thin soundboards, compared to what we tend to see today. I can't say for sure for an 8'3" piano but I know parlor sized pianos often had soundboards in the 6 mm range.
It doesn't sound like the rebuilder took a close look and measurements in order to faithfully reconstruct what was originally there. Pity. Now what - juice the hammers??

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Jurgen Goering
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