Acoustic Piano choices.... help?!

[robmix]

Originally Posted by 7rojo7

I found a '49 Schmidt&Flohr with Schwander action (Paris) for 2grand delivered to the studio and everybody loves it, it's an upright though. I did some piano trio early 20th century that sounds marvelous and some jazz trio work on it, great for pop and rock, It's definitely not a calling card piano though, But they come back once they use, though not for concert or larger ensembles.

That's funny, I have the same thing happen with my upright. My wife and I went to buy a grand a couple years ago mainly for the house but with the option of recording it if we ever got the right live room - we've both been playing for 25 years each. We tried out a lot of pianos mostly Yamaha and Steinway, but also a couple Kawai's, Baldwin, etc. Well, at one point I saw this Yamaha upright sitting in the corner and I sat down to play it while my wife was being schmoozed by the sales guy. As soon as I played the first chord I knew this piano had something special. Took it home the next day. Now we've got it in our live room and the reaction is always the same - "oh, you've got an upright ?". Then they play it, "damn this thing sounds good", "where do you find this", "was it expensive", "WOW!!!". Then they hear it recorded and it floors them again. They always come back. Our studio is for our use only, so this is definitely not a calling card piano. We're talking about getting a Bosendorfer as well but we'll still keep the upright.

[krs]

Originally Posted by Ted Nightshade

I've seen some European mallet percussion tuned anywhere from 440 to 442 to 444 to even 448! Is this some European thing?

Absolutely, esp. the Germans can go crazy high. Also in North America, 442 is a standard option just about everywhere (orchestrally speaking). For example, the University here has the pianos in the hall tuned to 442. (Probably a violinist requested at some point..)

I think it may also have something do with the old woodwind adage, "Better to be high than wrong". This kind of thinking has undoubtedly led to things creeping up.

[Jeff A. Roberts]

In an earlier post on this thread I had some bogus information. The post has been editted now, but for those who read it before, my apologies.

Schimmel does in fact use action by Renner.

[Ted Nightshade]

Originally Posted by krs

Absolutely, esp. the Germans can go crazy high. Also in North America, 442 is a standard option just about everywhere (orchestrally speaking). For example, the University here has the pianos in the hall tuned to 442. (Probably a violinist requested at some point..)

I think it may also have something do with the old woodwind adage, "Better to be high than wrong". This kind of thinking has undoubtedly led to things creeping up.

I can see it's true of percussion as well. There's actually a whole tradition of out of tune orchestra percussion- comes of tuning to the oboe I suppose! Tubular bells can be flat, but xylophone, glock, all that is usually too high, and that's kind of "the sound". One thing's for sure, it carries better too high. It can get swamped if it's flat.

We're doing little chamber-jazz pop stuff for lack of a better description, and basically you want everything right there in tune...

FWIW our piano tech thought nothing of tuning our old but wonderful 1928 upright to 442 or even 443. She didn't think of it as a big difference in tension or anything. This piano tends to go sharp, so I'm sure it's been higher than that before on it's own account. Don't know how that translates to a grand.

When my beloved 75-year old upright finally dies, from the looks of things, we're going to have to go to a full-on Steinway grand or something. I'd better be wealthy by then! I'd start saving if I had a surplus...

I tried easily 100 pianos before finding my love, and she let me know with a note that she had something gorgeous and dimensional and shimmering about her. My piano tech marvels that this piano has "depth of field", in her words. I've tried a LOT of pianos looking for a back-up, and some more tuning stability would be pretty welcome indeed, and I haven't found anything that compares except probably for a few big Steinways- as I mentioned, this is that "American" sound I'm after, the fantastic Bosendorfers and that are just not the right animal for our music. But I tell anyone, expect to look at 100 pianos.

At the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, how's about those false beats? They're just rampant. I'm told every piano has them, but it's hard to find one with very few. I realized recently that my mother's old baby grand is one of the very few pianos in the world without a whole bunch of false beats, especially around the upper register break.

False beats aren't such a big deal- it's just that some notes can't really ever get in tune...

[krs]

Originally Posted by Ted Nightshade

I can see it's true of percussion as well. There's actually a whole tradition of out of tune orchestra percussion- comes of tuning to the oboe I suppose! Tubular bells can be flat, but xylophone, glock, all that is usually too high, and that's kind of "the sound".

That's really interesting, didn't know that.

What are false beats BTW?

[Ted Nightshade]

False beats are when one string beats all by itself. Sometimes a couple false beats on the same unison of two or three strings can be tuned to cancel out and yield a steady tone.

Basically, the worse the false beats are, the harder it is to tune the piano. Some notes will never really iron out on pretty much any piano. A little of this is OK, adds to the character of the instrument. A lot makes it sound like the piano is always out of tune- A weak, wobbly character to the affected notes.

On my old piano, we chased these false beats around with the tech for a long time. Finally we lost about 2/3 of them and that was enough to change the whole feeling of the piano to a much classier sound.

[burst]

Well, it took a bit longer than planned, but WOW was it worth the wait.

The local Steinway dealer is going out of business, moving on, and they started a liquidation sale this past Thursday. The owner has known my mother for 30 years - she's been a piano teacher here since moving to the area - and I had called this guy for advice back when I started this thread over a year ago.

The sale isn't even open to the public, I guess, until this coming Monday... but... they sold 30 pianos the first day. Yikes.

He had only had three ebony Bs in the store by the second day of the sale. He played two of them for me and said there's no way he'd sell me either of them... because... he had this "one special B" for me, and started waxing philosophical about sometimes these hand built instruments' genes just line up perfectly and they "get it right".

She's 6' 10.5" of hand-crafted, soul-inspiring, ebony and ivory love.

And she's gorgeous.

And she's mine.

And it's my birthday.

Feels good, can't wait to take delivery tomorrow and get some pictures up here soon. If you're in Milwaukee and need a great piano in a great room, hit me up. Or hit me up if you just want to stop by and play it... that's why we got it, after all!

Thanks again for all the input on this thread, everyone.

[Remoteness]

Outstanding!