Air resonances on older keyboard instrument?

Hello Jake,

I am not qualified to speak with any authority about air resonance as it pertains to the 19th century work of Hermann von Helmholtz.  My experience in listening to various earlier pianos rests on their choice of materials covering the hammers (often cowhide leather or buck skin, either the skin side or the suede side), and the comparatively underwhelming tension of the strings, due to those early pianos' frames being constructed solely of wood rather than using a cast iron frame to support the massive string tension of a modern piano.

To my ears, the vast amount of potential energy stored in the tensions of 220+ steel strings (even the copper-covered strings have high-carbon steel cores), combined with an extra century's experimental research into soundboard technology,  -- selecting primarily spruce as the most favorable material and enhancing the soundboard's effectiveness by combining tapered shapes and ribbed crowns to increase rigidity, plus aligning the grain of the spruce to be parallel to the soundboard's bridges so as to most effectively distribute the induced vibrations throughout the soundboard's entire vibrating surface -- have more to do with modern pianos' sounds than do the effects of Helmholtz resonators strategically placed in and around the pianos of yore.

Cheers,

Joe

EDIT #1:  Oh, I had almost forgotten:  Modern pianos' actions are constructed such that the duration of impact of hammer upon the string is often shorter in time than of older actions.  This is important, because a modern hammer must not still be in contact with the string by the time the longitudinal wave impulse has rebounded from the opposite end of the string. (If the hammer IS still in contact, then it otherwise serves to dampen some of the tone of the string.)  End Edit #1

EDIT #2:  My limited knowledge of Helmholtz resonators is that they act as acoustic "notch filters" to selectively entrap a small range of frequencies into those enclosed air volumes as described in the article.  In my limited opinion, the effect of Hemholtz resonators is the OPPOSITE of the implied intent as described in the article.  End Edit #2