Throw out all your thoughts on soundboards.   Eight grains or less per
inch doesn't make a hill of beans.

Let's compare a soundboard on a piano to that of a fine guitar.  Your
finest steel-string guitars have solid spruce tops.  Many guitar
players would state that 8 grains per inch or less is better, and that
is simply not the case.

Bob Taylor builds high quality guitars in CA sold as Taylor guitars.
He took a shipping pallet and built a guitar from it to prove a point.
Its not the wood that makes the sound but the man putting it together.
The finest Martin guitar I ever owned (I have had over 100) had a really
wide grain pattern in the top and was made in 1972.

William B. White in the 'teens took two identical pianos and put a
plywood soundboard in one.  At a tuners convention no one could tell a
difference in the sound of the two pianos, as the story goes.  I saw a
nine-foot screw-stringer Mason & Hamlin grand with a birch soundboard
in it once that sounded great (but of course all nine-foot pianos sound
good).  I have also seen pianos with eight or more cracks in the board
and they sounded good.  I have seen new boards put in these pianos by
men that do it everyday not sound as good as the old board.

I firmly believe there is more "magic" in soundboard replacement than
just fine wood.  Many times an old piano can be improved by putting in
good hammers and new strings.

Don Teach, Shreveport Music Co
1610 E. Bert Kouns, Shreveport,  LA  71105
dat-smc@juno.com