I'm willing to give it that. And as the author says, it's probably a perfectly fine piano for 95% of the piano-playing public. But the "harpsichord setting"? Come on! Despite what some people think (and despite the way some people play) a harpsichord isn't just a tinny-sounding piano without the piano and forte. You're in much more direct contact with the strings when you play the harpsichord than when you play the piano and the touch isn't remotely similar. I hope that never gets digitized out of existence.

Without ever having tried this instrument, I tend to agree. From the days of the "replicating piano" and the earliest recordings, the instrument makers have wildly oversold their products. At least, the old organ makers, when they named particular stops with names like "flute" or "clarino" did not claim the organ stops could be mistaken for those instruments -- only that the sound quality was somewhat reminiscent of their mnemonics.

I worked with some samplers a few years back, and quickly found that I really hated that technology. Now, I imagine Yamaha's gotten a lot better since then. Surely they have a separate sample for each key (rather than extrapolating one sample over a coupld of octaves) -- but they certainly don't have a separate sample for each dynamic level. And the difference between an acoustic piano string struck hard and one struck soft is NOT just a difference in amplitude.

This piano probably is a viable instrument for many styles of playing. But I seriously doubt it's a real replacement for a well-made acoustic piano.

What electronic media are best for is creating musical sounds that cannot be done easily (or at all) on traditional instruments. For example, it would be great if a realistic-sounding piano could be quickly "switched" from one temperament to another -- or even alternate between tunings for different musical sections. Or if it could make a continuous gradation of timbre -- let's say, from a standard piano sound to a more "plucked" or "bowed" sound.

Very true Eben about the overselling-the-verisimilitude­.

It's an odd thing; I can't imagine the traditional art music world embracing this too warmly either. By the same token, in a non-traditional setting where subtle dynamics are not crucial (like a rock concert), piano samples on synths already sound enough like the real thing to obviate the need for an instrument like this.

A recording studio might make good use of it; a mic'd piano, after all, is itself an electronic simulation of the acoustic sound.

I do wonder if they did, indeed, sample the notes at different amplitudes, since they put so much care into other timbral aspects of the instrument. If so, then it would be true that the vast majority would never be able to tell the difference between the real thing and the simulation.

Not to mention the range of pedal effects. Hopefully a real pianist who has played one of these things will comment. The choice of different temperaments is exciting, however. And I suppose the thing holds the ultimate promise of the piano capo.

Not exactly the same thing as a capo. A capo just shifts every string on your guitar up by the same number of frets. Which means the change is only done in discrete, half-step intervals (normally, one fret equals a half-step interval), and that the tuning ratios of the strings remains the same. To change a temperament means altering the ratios from note-to-note. It's a topic that's a really fascinating blend of math and magic -- and can get quite complex. BTW, I doubt anybody's ever tuned a piano to a "pure Pythagorean scale". It makes for clean integer ratios -- which seemed to reflect some sort of fundamental order of the universe to the Pythagoreans -- but which sounds pretty raw in any sort of multiple-voice music.

And, even though modern pianos are oriented toward equal temperament, astute tuners do all sorts of "tweaks" around that system. I wonder how many flavors of equal temperament are available on the Yamaha -- or if the user can define his own tunings.

Well, I was joking about the capo, which of course allows a guitar player to change key without changing chord positions. So on a piano, I could be playing in "C" but really be in F#. Anyway, you could buy a perfectly good used baby-grand for twenty grand, a Yamaha or Kawai or, if you hunt, even a banged up Steinway S or M. Anyway, it's not an "improvement" it's a different instrument. The pick-ups on a solid body guitar are incredibly sensitive to the attach and fingering of the player. You can do stuff on one that's impossible on an acoustic or even a hollow-body electric. And visa versa of course. So I wish manufacturers would do something for keyboard players that gave them same new horizons instead of trying to cram a 1000 pound piano into a 100 pound box.

I agree. For me, the interesting electronic music is that which is unique to the electronic medium. Far less interesting are the endless attempts to duplicate great acoustic instruments. Way back in grad school, I took a great course in electronic music -- based on the now-ancient technology of analog circuits. The professor once commented "If you're working on a composition and need the sound of a grand piano, you should use a grand piano." Wise words.

Interestingly, your example of the C to F# transposing "piano capo" is like the piano Irving Berlin famously used. He played only in the key of F# major (apparently, he was comfortable with all those black keys). His piano could shift the keyboard mechanism and transpose for him.

According to Stephan Wolpe, Chopin thought B major was the best key for beginning pianists, which of course has the same number of accidentals as F#. It makes sense because when playing the scale it is easier to pass the thumb under 3 and 4 which will be on black keys. C is actually hard to finger smoothly. Easier to read, harder to play.

I react here to your pricing; I have a 1949 Steinway B I'm willing to sell for $25K. It was the favorite piano used by the Indianapolis Symphony for many years up until 1972, when I bought it from the Steinway store in town.