Hamburg Steinway

[A440A@AOL.COM]

 JIM writes:

>As someone else has said the type of recording you plan on doing should
>somewhat affect your choice of instrument.

Greetings, 
     Yes,  solo recording pianos don't not need to be as bright as pianos 
that must compete with drums and bass guitars, etc. 
     Silence is one of the great attributes of a recording piano.  You will 
want to pay particular attention to noise that keyrelease and the dampers 
create.  Yea verily, a silent set of dampers in a studio is a beautiful thing!
     Two other aspects are also helpful in judging a pianos suitability.  The 
first is to make sure that the plate doesn't sympathetically create an 
audible "ring".  This will usually be in the low frequency range, (between 
100 and 600 Hz). Thump the plate with your knuckle, and once you have the 
sound in your ear, listen from C40 up to see if it comes out on any 
particular note.  
      Another thing to put the critical ear on is the ratio of impact noise 
to string sound.  Plate sounds often form a large part of the impact sound.   
Listen to the C40-52 area notes with the string damped by a cloth rag so that 
you get a recognizable image of what the impact noise actually sounds like, 
and then play the notes normally from there up to C64.  
     You will hear the impact noise all the way up, but does it increase in 
places, even though you don't get a louder note?  Sometimes the brightness of 
the hammers will hide this from your ear, but it will show up on tape as a 
character of the attack, and make things "muddy".  
    There is a whole dictionary of the adjectives with which engineers will 
describe the sound coming through the monitor; airy, thick, cottony, muddy, 
tight, loose,  round, sharp, flat, edgy, toasty, and my favorite of all time 
was when they finally got the piano sound just right,  and the producer 
called it "salty". 
  go figure (:)}}
Regards, 
Ed Foote