Pauly, you have made some interesting experiments. Where your listening test blind tests?
Unfortunately I have only a small hand-sized sample of 1 inch thick UPM Finnish plywood. Not enough for true experimentation.
Here are some further thoughts:
If indeed the benefit of maple were transmissive rather than isolative, you may want to try a single large solid board, which we would expect to be more transmissive than a butcherblock, which is instead meant to break up vibrations and stresses to an extent. The back of string instruments is constructed from a single solid board, or two at the most.
You may also try to experiment with thin boards--one inch or even less, and see what the more flexible body has on sound.
After all, a company represented by Virtual Dynamics manufactures platforms and racks made from brass castings, that ring like church bells.
It is also worth pointing out that the original choice of maple by the old masters was partially a matter of necessity rather than of true exhaustive search. Maple being a rather common hard wood readily sourceable in most European sub-alpine and trans Alpine regions where luthiers resided and worked. At most, the wood was imported from neighbouring regions.
in the last few centuries, Luthiers having remained a conservative lot, never truly experimented too much with more exotic timber for their resonators.
Now days there are so many more very hard and relatively inexpensive woods to experiment with, even for 'isolation' platforms: Ype and Lyptus, just for example.
Have you ever tried to play with them?
Unfortunately I have only a small hand-sized sample of 1 inch thick UPM Finnish plywood. Not enough for true experimentation.
Here are some further thoughts:
If indeed the benefit of maple were transmissive rather than isolative, you may want to try a single large solid board, which we would expect to be more transmissive than a butcherblock, which is instead meant to break up vibrations and stresses to an extent. The back of string instruments is constructed from a single solid board, or two at the most.
You may also try to experiment with thin boards--one inch or even less, and see what the more flexible body has on sound.
After all, a company represented by Virtual Dynamics manufactures platforms and racks made from brass castings, that ring like church bells.
It is also worth pointing out that the original choice of maple by the old masters was partially a matter of necessity rather than of true exhaustive search. Maple being a rather common hard wood readily sourceable in most European sub-alpine and trans Alpine regions where luthiers resided and worked. At most, the wood was imported from neighbouring regions.
in the last few centuries, Luthiers having remained a conservative lot, never truly experimented too much with more exotic timber for their resonators.
Now days there are so many more very hard and relatively inexpensive woods to experiment with, even for 'isolation' platforms: Ype and Lyptus, just for example.
Have you ever tried to play with them?