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I had a conversation with a prof from University of the Pacific (which is in Stockton, go figure) who was in charge of their piano program. He strongly contested the "new Steinways are shit" trope, after playing a whole lot of them and buying them for his students.

There's actually a book I read about the making of one particular Steinway concert grand, which is now retired after an illustrious career on stage at Carnegie Hall and other big places. I think this is it: https://www.amazon.com/88-Keys-Making-Steinway-Piano/dp/0517...

(reviews are a little mixed, so read those before you buy it.)

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Steinway produces a ton of pianos every year.

The best of their pianos go to the concert stages and recording studios.

The next best go to their top clients.

The next best get reserved for their artists.

The next best get put into stores for "normal" people to buy.

Steinway, owned by a finance firm on Wall Street, has various quality control issues. They'll ship a six-figure piano with saw dust in it, lousy regulation, etc. Technicians know how to clean these up and work with them, but they don't hold a candle to e.g. the quality control of Fazioli. Steinway is the household name, and is ubiquitous in professional settings, so they can get away with it.

Usually you try out a piano before you buy it, and preferably you have a tech look at it, too. So wouldn't you notice if it had issues?

If you hire a technician, they will tell you the problems the piano has, and tell you the qualities of the piano that will be practically immutable (e.g., aspects of timbre and resonance). The technician won't be able to tell you if the sound is what you prefer though.

More likely than not, for the average Steinway in a store, the technician will suggest getting it voiced and regulated, which will carry a $1000+ price tag and a couple days' worth of work. Maybe that doesn't matter if you're already spending $200k, though.

I think it's also true that different pianos bode well for different repertoire sets. I think Chopin is played well on Steinways because Steinways have heavy keys, meaning that exercising the full freedom of dynamics works out better for when you want to make very, very soft notes and then soft notes and then roaringly loud notes. I'm no Chopin's Ballades-level pianist but playing Steinway at the piano store I do find this to be true.

I don't think the difference in the key action has much to do with appropriateness of repertoire. Most top tier pianos will have a similar feeling action if their regulation were all attended to by a top tier technician.

The construction, however, does have a lot to do with how repertoire sounds. Bosendorfers and their all-spruce construction causes more warmth and resonance, useful for traditionally played baroque music, but can lead to a blurriness in romantic (i.e., Chopin-era) music. Contrast with a Fazioli or Steinway which have a little bit of a tighter tone due to their hard rim cases.

>Steinways have heavy keys

I'll preface with by saying that I know very little about pianos but I love them for all their mechanics.

I've heard it said that if it were possible to get the action feel equal across all the keys, the manufacturer would. But your comment makes it sound less like a bug than a feature. Is it because people have just gotten used to it as an expectation, or because there is an inherent advantage?

(I'm assuming your statement about "heavy" keys was meant as a comparison between models and not a comparison of keys on the same piano).

I don't think I'd call their keys "heavy" although others might differ. They feel more like a moderate resistance followed by a nice satisfying thunk when it hits the bottom. Whereas other keyboards feel more springy.

But maybe that's just me.

Well you can get Steinway greens, or reds but most people stick to browns. The IBM L series Steinway was unbeatable but who has the time to hunt in akehabera

>The technician won't be able to tell you if the sound is what you prefer though

That's not a problem at all, since that's exactly what you should be able (and only you) tell yourself!

It's a problem more often than you might think. Some people view technicians as having knowledge of what the "right" sound of a piano is, and when a person likes (or dislikes) a sound but a technician states it's actually due to a defect (or by design), it can make that person second-guess themselves.

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