I think it's a fair question who is the piano being made for, the pianist at the bench or the audience member in the hall. Pianos that don't sound good at the bench sometimes do sound good in the hall and that's from both ends of the spectrum. I've hear pianos that sounded close to obnoxious at the bench that sounded great in the hall and it was hard to convince pianists that the stridency they were feeling at the bench wasn't getting out there to the audience. I suppose the same could be said on the other side as well, pianos that don't give much at the bench might provide a quite balanced and beautiful tone in the hall. Unfortunately, for the audience member to hear it you have to first get the pianist to play it and if you can't convince the pianist about how the audience member will hear it in spite of what they experience at the bench then maybe you've put the priority in the wrong place. For the individual at home pianist it's less of a problem because you're making the piano for one individual. I've delivered a full bells and whistles redesign executed after much explanation and discussion to a customer of mine and his comment was (and has been), "I love it, but not everybody does". But for a performance piano with a variety of pianists coming through you have to aim for something that will appeal to the broadest range of artists. I do think it's unfair to characterize production pianos as simply having "an extensive list of faults and deficiencies" or to suggest that demanding pianists praise those. Demanding pianists expect a certain range of musical expression and a certain sensitivity in the instrument even if it means they can overdrive it if they're not careful. In fact, sometimes that's exactly what they want to do. A piano that makes you sound better than you are can do so because it limits the sensitivity of the piano's tonal range and pulls everything to the middle, dumbs it down a bit where one's minor missteps won't be so noticed--like driving a race car versus a smooth cruising sedan. I can recall some of the early lessons I had when I was younger with a teacher who had a Hamburg B. I'd never played on anything like that and at first I couldn't control it--it was far too sensitive. But after I got used to it, it was a dream. I also think it's unfair to characterize more conventional designs as "badly balanced scales, bright metallic voicing, aurally obvious (to offensive) break transitions, and killer octaves and trebles that overdrive into distortion at anything over moderate attack levels". While those problems can exist to a greater or lesser degree, to suggest that as the standard by which pianists measure everything else by virtue of what they've gotten used to is unfair not only to the pianos but to the pianists as well. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com But power and projection don't get it. I've demonstrated how the unlacquered and voiced down hammers on my remanufactures will project just as well into the hall, and sound better doing it in my opinion, than the (to me) painfully bright piano of the same model right next to it. Positive comments are made about tone quality, usable dynamic range, inaudible break transitions, clearness of the top third of the scale, and overall balance throughout the compass. The complaint was that it didn't blow the pianists eyebrows back sitting at the piano, which they were aware would be the case before I even started on the rebuild. The biggest problem I have with the acceptance of these redesigns, is that while a production piano that has had a million iterations of presumed refinement in the build process is allowed an extensive list of faults and deficiencies, and is even praised for them if the name on the fall board is right. A one-off redesign, with no previous iteration is, however, expected to be all things to everyone, and absolutely perfect under the closest scrutiny. It's also, somehow, expected to be just like the original, only better somehow. Civilians are great. They tend to recognize the merits and usually really love the sound. The most common phrase I hear is "It makes me sound better than I am". It's the techs who have a large portion of their lives invested in disguising, justifying, and finally glorifying the toad's warts that they couldn't disguise that are the core of the lack of progress. I've watched the state of the art being relentlessly dragged back into the stone age for the last week on this list, and I think it's a shame. We grade everything different against what we're used to. It's partially intellectual, but mostly glandular. I have little doubt that if we had grown up listening to pianos like the redesigns coming out of good rebuild shops, we would have no tolerance for badly balanced scales, bright metallic voicing, aurally obvious (to offensive) break transitions, and killer octaves and trebles that overdrive into distortion at anything over moderate attack levels. But then, I'm not an expert. Ron N
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