We're talking about sample-based instruments, right, some even with tactile feedback in form of truncated actions - but manufacturers neglect to sample some of the other important sounds like dampers or all our favorite clicks and buzzes. And memory has been cheap until recently. I believe there is an amplifier on the market that incorporates a spruce soundboard as the mount for its speaker, but how much of this isn't marketing I can't say having never heard one. I have a 1986-vintage Kurzweil synthesizer which builds sounds from tunable sine-wave partials (or pink or white noise) each with its own envelope; certainly it is not a piano in a box (a fairly large one in this case), but it sounds better than most that are purported to be. It takes as long to program via computer as tuning a piano; a computer is also needed to translate MIDI information for octave stretch. Considering that a working system would include at least one computer, a keyboard, amplifier (preferably with a large spruce transducer driven by multiple coils), and all of the associated cables, it would be more difficult to move than a piano. And here I was thinking that electronic pianos were preferred just because they were easier! Clark
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