Piano choice. Thoughts please

[David Boyce]

Hi folks,

Roger, thanks very much for your further thoughts about piano choice and
Bosendorfer.  I understand what you say and it chimes very much with my own
experiences.

About the Bosendorfers you say:

>I am not sure if it is the kerfed rim or the string termination that
causes
>the treble weakness.  But gut feel tends to tell me it is the rim
>construction.
>My whole thing with these pianos is the balance.

I know what you mean.  Somtimes the treble around octave 5/6 can seem a bit
thin and 'papery', somehow. 
I think you're entirely right about recording engineering. My feeling is
that I've not yet found a really well-recorded CD of a Fazioli, which is I
guess is the fault of the recording engineers, not the pianos.

You also say, about Bosendorfers: 
>I find them a high maintainance piano, to keep them sounding good.  You
will also need a highly >skilled tech to keep them good.  This should be a
consideration.

Yes, the technician would be me!  Maybe I'm not highly skilled enough!

The Steinway AS is a less well-finished model A intended for schools. It
has a less polished plate and a matt rather than high gloss case finish.

I agree absolutely with what you say about properly re-built B's.  I tune
and maintain the pianos in my local theatre and they have a hundred-year
old B which was rebuilt by Steinway about 15 years ago. It is just
wonderful. rich, rounded and warm, not at all hard. A lovely piano for
accompanying.  I enjoy sitting in the audience and listening to performaces
on it after I've tuned it.  Steinway used to have a contract to do
maintenance tiunings on it every year, and I tuned it before
concerts/recitals.  I was interested to come in one time just after the
Steinway guy had been, and compare his tuning to mine.  He had done a very
lovely bass tuning - better than I'd achieved (which put me on my mettle!),
but I didn't think his treble was as carefully done as mine.

Steinway Hall in London had a couple of rebuilt 100 yr old B's in on Monday
when  went in, and one in particular sounded nice. But the keys weren't
good - had evidently been re-covered years ago, and not very nicely.

Thanks again for your comments Roger.  Keep the opinions coming folks!