Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Is there really anything at all special about Steinways?

We have seen how bad carbon fibre sounds on guitars and violins, so why use it on a piano?

and?

I listened to the Phoenix Carbiano demo videos, and I thought it sounded quite good, but the tone resembles an upright!

I'm new to this forum. I just purchased a Steinway Model B (manufactured in 1994), so of course my answer as to whether or not a Steinway is special is YES!

Short bit of background:

Prior to this piano, I had a Charles Walter W190 grand (manufactured in 2005), and a Steinway Model S (manufactured in 1936.)

I'm 66 years of age. I began study of the piano at age 8 and then rerouted to brass instruments through secondary school and through college. I received a degree in Music Education from the University of North Texas. I never went on to pursue music as a profession, but the love for the piano never left me and I've continued on to pursue playing it throughout my adult life. Through the course of the years through my music studies, my ear for musical sound quality became much more developed.

Getting back to the point of this particular thread - is there anything special about Steinways ? Yes. Absolutely.

I have no way of recalling how many pianos I've tried / played over the years. Baldwins, Yamahas, Kawais, Schimmels, Mason & Hamlins, Bosendorfers... Some extremely nice pianos. Over the many years - I've played hundreds of pianos I think.

Included in that were some really lousy sounding Steinways that I would never want to own.

But - I've also played some Steinways that were absolutely wonderful beyond description.

I've always come back to a sound that I have more consistently found inherent in Steinways.

So to me - there is definitely something very special about what a Steinway can be - and in the case of the model B that I just purchased - is.

I have always wondered how a grand piano would sound without a soundboard, now I know it

Thanks for the information on Pianoteq. I looked them up and you can get the Pianoteq Pro version which includes a bunch of great pianos for only $449 total, including a Steinway D and B (the latter a Hamburg). I was looking for a Boesendorfer, and in one collection of historical pianos (Kremsegg1) they include a Besendorfer grand piano (actually I. Besendorfer) from 1829. I think this must have been before Ignaz changed his name. :-) The samples sound quite fine through my computer speakers.

I think the most interesting aspect by far is that you could simulate how a piano's tone changes as the hammer goes from soft to hard (although in this case for certain the model is not based on reality, i.e. they didn't actually have real pianos of different hammer hardness, but rather it's a mathematical prediction of how the sound would change). Check out this video starting at 35:00

Umm, I have to take some issue with this. I have played a carbon fiber guitar and was stunned at the clarity and evenness of it, as well as how malleable the tone could be. My personal, long-term, 6-string is a 1946 Martin D-18 that professional guitarists around town,(and this is "guitar town) have intently tried to buy, so my opinion is a comparative one. Carbon fiber is great for actions, (I have built a lot of them), and properly engineered, has shown it can make a very nice guitar.
Regards,

manic . . .

When my grandfather retired at about 65 he bought a motorhome and he and my grandmother planned to travel the US. Just after they departed on their very first trip, his vision blurred and they had to return home. It was a brain tumor and he died of it a short time later. It happens . . .

Carbon fiber is inferior for soundboards. They may be just ok when listening on its own, but when a side by side is done they're really bad.
When i made a visit to the Fandrichs in Stanwood, they had one piano with a carbon fiber board. It was the worst piano he had. It just didn't even come close to some of the magnificent instruments Darrell had on hand.

To me it has an odd timbre, and its way too stiff. Probably because of the latter it suffers from the former. I believe the future will be some variant of carbon fiber. Grass fibers show promise. The engineering will have to be worked out though. But for now spruce reigns supreme.

-chris

@chris. How does this compare with the Fandrichs' CF piano?

I agree totally, I don't like the sound, it is empty, it has been tried since the 80s, but if people want to try again that's totally fine.

I played this particular instrument when I visited Hurstwood Farm twice back in 2016 and 2017. If I am not mistaken, it has a traditional spruce soundboard and Renner action , but coupled with the Phoenix agraffe system, which gives it tremendous resonance compared to the original Steingraeber. A bigger, fatter and more three dimensional tone that was very appealing to my ears, but some may prefer a leaner, clearer and more pronounced attack of a traditional instrument.
The Phoenix pianos with the carbon fibre soundboard, agraffes and WNG action, similarly had tremendous resonance, but my initial impression was that the fundamental tone had less "bloom", thus seemed thinner overall to my ears.
That said, I believe the use of carbon fibre in soundboards is an evolving technology, and I did notice some improvements between my visits in 2016 and 2017.

I was at Finchcocks last October where they were using a Phoenix, on loan as a second piano because of Covid - the course tutor used that and we used the Steinway. My impression of listening to Phoenix pianos online prior to that were that they were 'colder' in tone - perhaps thinner as described - but the Finchcock one wasn't too bad though we didn't really hear it much and I didn't get to try it out. Graham Fitch seemed happy with it. And yes - an evolving technology.

While I agree that the pianos I have heard with Carbon Fiber soundboards were inferior to similar pianos with traditional solid spruce boards, unfortunately they all had bridge agraffes compared with traditional bridges so I couldn't say for sure that the problems were the carbon fiber boards rather than the bridge agraffes.

I have heard carbon fiber cellos and violins that sounded very good so I think carbon fiber has excellent potential.

I couldn't tell you if the carbon fiber was the problem or the design. I suspect that with the right design, a carbon fiber board would be good.

I feel similarly about laminated soundboards although I have heard a lot more of them. I have never heard a laminated board that I felt was really excellent, but I have heard many that were pretty good sounding, especially at the price point of the piano. I suspect with the right design, a laminated board could be excellent. I have heard many laminated boards that sounded better than poorly designed solid boards.

I would say we could also go the other direction: instead of replacing wood with another material we could go back to open face pinblocks and so replace metal with wood.

I have been wondering how on earth my old Weber’s bass can sound so good. I keep feeling like it sounds like they got some aspect of a concert grand in there, but the longest string is only a bit over 44” long. I finally concluded it likely has to do with the bass terminations being on a wood strip, which rests on the wooden open face pinblock. I think this is acting as a second soundboard. I don’t have a tuning fork handy (to press against the wood and test the sound) but when I tap a finger on the wood termination strip it makes a different sound from when I tap on the iron plate.

I attended a solo concert with a great sounding CF cello, last fall. If you closed your eyes, you probably wouldn't have known the difference or found the sound lacking in any way.

The initial reaction might be ok, but we are talking about the finest details in sound, it's about living and playing the same instrument everyday, make comparisons in the same room, etc. I know spruce is expensive, but as alternative if I had to choose between pine wood and carbon fibre, I would choose pine.

Very well said, Peter!