It could be said that a new piano is never worse than it is when new. A new piano needs to settle in. Tunings will hold longer as the strings stop stretching out. The tone will take shape as the piano is played in, and voicing touch ups are done. Touch up regulation fights action felt compression. These issues are why a new piano needs more frequent service in the first few years.
That relates to the amount of stabilization allowed at the factory.
On first grade grands it was not unusual to have the pianos broken in at the factory (I heard that piano students where allowed to train on grand pianos at Bechstein, but it may be more or less true..
It also happen on the sales floor when a piano stay in the shop for 6-12 years, tuner, a little played.
In any case, regulation is done more than once on the normal course .
The piano is broken in with machione playing then regulated and voiced again.
All regulations are done 3 times on a good quality grand.
I have been very surprised to learn that the NY Steinways where not sold in that "ready to play" condition.
To give an example, the Hamburg ones are prepped to the point the string hook (to level unison) is not a tool in the bag of the concert technician. The job have been done to the point not a string a have to be leveled (in theory, of course).
All those operations take time, and cost, and the high quality is only noticed by real high level pianists, so I understand they are done minimally on cheaper instruments.
That gives some work to the good technician (if the customer can understand the situation)
It can be surprising, an instrument that is not enough preped is about 50% of its musicality, hence the desire sometime to "change the hammers" or modify the bridge.
As much as good hammers can help if the original ones are so so, this should not be necessary on a new piano.
But voicing is a specialty that takes time and good pianos, to learn , in absence of factory or good workshop training, so real voicers are the exception, and many pianos stay in a semi voiced condition.
There seem to be a tendency to look for hammers that need "no" voicing. In what I can hear it could be ideal but the FFF good quality (dense, at the edge of saturation) cannot be attained without voicing, as it is due to the dynamics of the zones immediately under the crown. more soft hammers gives a more linear dynamics and the FFF is generally very open but not concentrated enough for what I could hear.
Good for old soundboards probably.
