I have been a technician doing major rebuilding & restorations for over 30 years and today I heard something for the first time and need help with it. Another tech I met for the first time stated that he liked to put new ribs on a soundboard while still in the piano. I am getting ready to do a major overhaul on an 1880's German piano and he stated the ribs needed to be replaced without pulling the soundboard. Do people do that? I didn't think it was possible for many reasons, especially when there are no issues currently with the ribs or soundboard now and the main support beams for the case are in the way and whole bunch of other concerns.

Anyone out there have experience or an opinion on this subject?

Dr. that info is pure rubbish. The ribs are dehydrated along with the soundboard before they are put in a soundboard press and allowed to dry. When they re-hydrate the board will develop the characteristic crown. I have always had great success with this method. The method you describe should be guaranteed to render a flat soundboard. This topic is better posted to the technicians forum.

Whether the ribs are dry or not will not affect the crown. There is very little shrinkage in the direction of the grain. The crown comes from the shrinkage of the soundboard across the grain, while being restrained by the ribs. Typically, the ribs are heated along with the soundboard, which dehydrates them, but that is just incidental to the process.

I’ve not heard of this being done and wonder about its viability. As you’ve mentioned there will be many problems with working room. And, most ribs—at least those in pianos likely to need new soundboards—are notched into the inner rim. I’m not sure how you’d get the new ribs back in and properly glued.

There are some rebuilders—mostly in Europe—who consider the wood of the original soundboard panel to have some magical powers and work hard to save it. Basically they take soundboard assemblies that were originally compression-crowned out of the piano (carefully!), remove the original ribs and replace them with new, machine-crowned ribs. This does salvage the original soundboard panel but results in a rib-crowned soundboard assembly rather than a compression-crowned soundboard assembly. The resulting tonal improvement comes from this change rather than from anything magical about the aged wood of the original soundboard panel.

Personally I don’t see any benefit to doing this. It’s a lot of extra work (hence, time and expense to the piano owner) and there are no tonal advantage. But, to each his/her own.

If you are not detecting acoustical problems that can legitimately be blamed on soundboard deterioration I can’t think of any reason for replacing either the ribs or the soundboard.

ddf