Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum MY NEW PIANO or KEYBOARD! - Share Your Story! Steingraeber E-272

It all started when I promised myself an upgrade to a Yamaha U3 I'd owned and enjoyed for the last 15 years. I had a number of instruments I wanted to check out including Steingraeber's 130 and 138 and I suppose you could say the rest is history because as wonderful as the good uprights were, I found myself trying all manner of premium uprights, then smaller grands, then 7' grands at which point I thought I'd gone far enough in space and cost terms. I then encountered this E-272 for private sale and within a minute of playing it knew that I would have to make the perceived impracticality of placing a concert grand in my home work.

To my utter amazement it works incredibly well, aesthetically, acoustically, musically, it's just perfect. The colours, dynamic range and clarity are exceptional. It's a new house to me as well, so it was something of a gamble. The room is very absorbant with carpets and curtains which helps. Dimensions are approx 16.5 x 14.5ft so its not huge. There's a wide doorway through to the rest of the house, on the wall opposite the piano.

I've placed the piano on a heatproof mat to protect from underfloor heating which keeps the room at a constant 19 degrees (this to me would normally feel cold but in this house it doesn't). The piano also has a dual-tank dampp-chaser system installed, and I have an industrial temp/humidity sensor on the wall which is logging both the room and piano metrics to a cloud-based service so its always visible to me and will alert if conditions deteriorate.

The Steingraeber supplied box on the floor contains a complete second Renner action and keyboard for the instrument which my technician can swap easily and I understand the former owner swapped between them, with the action currently in the box voiced slightly brighter to provide a greater range of possibilities or even just to distribute wear evenly and have a 'backup' action should maintenance be required on one. I have a separate temp/humidity probe going inside that box.

I've read a lot of opinions about placing concert grands in smaller settings. Given that I can sit down and play this piano at far quieter levels than its upright predecessor, with far greater control, and that my wife can't hear me playing from the other side of the house when all the doors are closed, I'm glad I followed my own intuition about sound levels.

Anyhow I wanted to share this. This forum has been an incredibly useful source of info in doing my research.

From a Yamaha U3 to a Streingraeber concert grand, what a change in plans!

It looks absolutely beautiful though, congrats on the new purchase

Thank you. It is a fairly good example of scope creep, in project management terms

Haha, if you can afford the best, why not buy the best? It’s spectacular. Enjoy it!

I tell my wife that we didn’t buy a house that would allow me to upgrade to a grand and I get a withering look.

You make a good point about dynamic range. I’m sure you can play quieter than my Yamaha DYUS5, and louder too, lol.

I have a question about the heatproof mat. Is it more than a piece of carpet? I have sensors at the bottom and top of my piano and have noticed a five degree difference in temperate and humidity. It’s because of the cold basement below and the lack of a subfloor in my 1925 house. I think I need to do something like you have done.

Hi Larry,

It is a mat made and supplied specifically through the piano trade for this purpose, namely protection from underfloor heating systems. It's carpet backed with some insulating layer at a guess. I had it custom made for the piano.

A lot of people have expressed concern to me about UFH generally which I take on-board, however rather than disabling the zone (the entire room) and then needing to rely on an alternate means of heating I intend to try and find an acceptable solution that allows me to benefit from the UFH system without harming the piano in any way.

My approach is to take a range of measures and monitor very closely, and if there are any problems I will adjust or disable the heating entirely until I have solved the problem.

It is a screed type system meaning the water pipes are cast into what is effectively a concrete floor, which acts as a huge heat sink. It takes hours to warm up and again to cool down so there are no sudden changes or extreme heat emanating from the floor. It's more of a gentle constant warming effect.

The piano also has the DC / life saver system with the shroud covering the underside.

As I mentioned I am experimenting with some industrial grade monitoring and logging devices. It wouldn't be hard to setup some home automation so if the temperature rises or humidity drops in the room and exceeds a defined threshold the heating for that room gets turned off entirely and I get an alert to my phone.

Being in the UK we don't experience extreme dry but outside humidity levels can be high. If I can keep the room at 45% or thereabouts, with heating on, that should be fine for the piano even disregarding any benefit that the DC provides.

I intend to get more of these sensors so I could end up placing them everywhere (above soundboard, below soundboard, in the action box, in the room, on the floor below the piano) which might be information overkill but actually I suspect it would reveal some very interesting relationships e.g. when opening a window (in summer, no AC), when opening the room door, when having the lid up versus closed, when having a heavy fleece-lined cover on the piano to protect from an inquisitive cat, etc. and also with and without the Dampp Chaser in all these scenarios! Massive amounts of information and correlations to learn.

I will of course share my findings when I have conducted these experiments in due time!

Meanwhile I am enjoying getting to know this new instrument immensely. It is a credit to its previous owner and its condition is testament to the fact that he maintained it as a pride and joy, which I will do as well. I can't see why I would ever need to replace it short of significant downsizing the home.

Thanks for the information. Could you tell where you bought the insulating mat? I wonder if I can find a supplier in the US. I dislike carpet but a small rug that fit under my piano would be ok.

I get very dry and cold temperatures in my home. I’m doing my best with a forced air furnace humidifier and a Venta humidifier but I had not reckoned on the cold basement.

My in-laws in Provence have radiant heating but I suppose it can cook a piano slowly. Radiant heat is wonderful because your feet are always warm.

I will find out what I can - the carpet order was taken care of by my very helpful technician who also measured and supplied a template of the piano for the bespoke shape, so I'll ask for more details.

Congratulations on owning one of the finest pianos in the world! I'm sure your technician is nearly as thrilled as you are about your new piano.

Congratulations!🎉🎊🎈 It looks fantastic!

Fantastic, congrats! (by any chance could it be the same E272 that was advertised here on PW?)

Indeed it is the same instrument with its unique spare action. A little search reveals that its original owner also posted here too when he too went through the process of searching for a piano and acquiring it and I am fascinated to read, retrospectively, his appraisal of the same instrument and the reasons he chose it, which are absolutely consistent with my own impressions. Sadly he passed away last year which is why the instrument became available for sale. I can only hope to treasure it and maintain it to the same level he did.

Beautiful. You are very fortunate.

Provenance is always interesting . Congrats on a lovely instrument and I am sure the original owner is smiling somewhere happy that the piano is loved and played.

Thank you both. It's just been tuned and both actions regulated and is on a whole new level altogether - it's like having a new piano all over again - in fact it literally is when considering I've swapped to the second action for the time being.

The piano is truly magnificent. Very sad of course that the original owner passed away. Believe I remember reading his posts not so very long ago.
PS I would be interested to know the temperature difference between the bare floor and on top of the mat.

Congratulations! Beautiful piano. Nothing beats having a well-maintained, top-notch concert grand at home.

I haven't actually measured that (yet)

The underfloor heating is much less of an issue than I thought it would be, but then I feel I have taken sufficient mitigating measures in any case. The floor doesn't get that warm underfoot, its a gentle stable heat. I also find if I leave the door open the temperature is kept at the right level just by ambient warmth from the rest of the house and the heating doesn't actually come on very much in that particular room. It's all zoned and I can monitor and control it remotely.

The windows are a bigger issue - sunlight warms the room yet opening a window would introduce a sharp drop in air temperature which would be far more harmful. It's only spring but I have already had to pull the curtains in the daytime. I will experiment with blinds and potentially also film on the windows if it becomes a problem as we go into summer.

The spare action box sitting on the heat-protective carpet tracks ambient temperature closely rather than rising / falling with heating coming on or off so I am confident from those measurements that its doing its job.

Now I've properly calibrated my thermostats this room averages 21 degrees and about 40% humidity. When I have a probe directly under the soundboard you can see the dampp chaser also doing its job.

There are essentially several climates in the room to monitor - the piano itself thanks to the DC, the spare action inside the box, the air temperature and humidity, and the floor temperature. I need to get some more sensors!