Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum What makes one piano truly better?

Good. At least you know what I mean - which is along the lines of - if we take everything away from you, and have you living in 3rd world (or worse) conditions, and you have nothing - living in poverty, then you would have a really good opportunity to learn about handling the situation associated with your comment :


And this brings us back to the tonic/root ----- where audiences in all eras still enjoyed very thoroughly the performances with the available instruments. Also - people even got up to the stage where the performance and sounds of pianos are/were absolutely fantastic and beautiful already (to them), and this is not even recently. If it sounds great to them - then that's great.

Also - for a single piano - regardless of its sound and performance (assuming optimised and expertly tuned etc) ----- it is known different people have different tastes. And for professional performances - choices need to be made about which piano to use for a particular environment, and for particular music styles, and maybe for some cases - need to match it with other instruments etc. So - any 'exercise' involving comparisons of pianos - for coming up with a verdict on which one is 'better' - ideally requires stating a criteria for comparison. And the 'verdict' (ie. which one is better) is going to be decided on by an individual, or by a group/committee - by consensus voting - the more people the better --- and the number of voters should be an 'odd' number. Also - the verdict does not necessarily need to be accepted or well-received by other individuals or groups that weren't involved with the comparison.

Overall - if an instrument is enjoyed by at least somebody - even one person - regardless of what it is, then that's a win already.

You should feel lucky. Mine can only do Mozart and chamber music. Apparently, anything else and the rim will distort and become percussively shattering!!

Do you at least have grass or edible plant roots to eat?

Frankly, that's all I can afford after the piano!

Jethro I was not just talking about the Fazioli as a fabulous looking instrument.I said earlier I played it and thought it was a wonderful instrument with a gorgeous tone.A creative tone..

Please see what I wrote!

I’m sure it’s gorgeous. All these pianos sound glorious I wish I had one of each.

Well now this thread has gone full circle from the OP's Petrof, which now plays and sounds just as he wishes, to a Fazioli which is as good as it gets in Tre Corda's experience. So what makes the Petrof worse than the Fazioli?

My tests would be, "What am I missing?" and "Does it matter to me?"

Good question. Could be the OP's off his rocker.

Emery, since you’re still looking at responses 8 pages (and probably hundreds of posts) in, I’d just recommend reading the PB ‘Ratings’ article for how they actually define the tiers. For the performance grade pianos, the Iconic, Renowned, and Distinguished tiers are all built to extremely high standards, and the placement of pianos in one tier vs another is, in this categorization, largely done on the basis of prestige. The article makes a point of emphasizing that one person’s rank ordered list of ‘best’ pianos will be subjective and also reflect different priorities. I understand that the decision to order pianos this way (rather than the editiorial staff’s list of what they like best to least) may not be what everyone would prefer. But to me it makes a lot of sense to group the pianos this way, and they are transparent about how they group the pianos.

But this all got started off because you were wondering about your piano relative to others. You’re in a great position. You have a PETROF that you love, you haven’t found a piano that you like more, and you didn’t break the bank to get the piano. Count your blessings, enjoy your piano, and don’t worry too much about whether someone else might place a FaziSteinDorfer higher up on their list of preferred pianos. Someone undoubtedly will! I think it’s great that we live in a world where there are different high quality piano options and where people have preferences for very different instruments.

Amber Heard is a beautiful woman, does that make her a truly better person than any other woman?[/quote Jethro]

What's missing is that no one noticed that a woman was described like a beautiful object.and that tre corda is is being described as though she is shallow and dim witted, because she was impressed by a Fazioli. 😉 😃

I probably would of too. 🙂

I was impressed by a Schimmel concert grand. Not sure if that’s super high end but the action was very smooth and easy to play. I hope I can somewhat replicate that with my piano.

🤪 Whats your point please let us know? TD has a Schimmel semi concert or concert or something. Ask him!

Not sure actually 😐

Just edited the post? Lol.

Does he really??

Thanks Sgilesa. Yes, I feel quite lucky. Even we pianists with modest grand pianos are enjoying a first world luxury that relatively few can experience, and for that I am eternally grateful. I'm not really worried about how my piano ranks, it's more an academic question. Perhaps I'm more concerned that I'm just being oblivious to something that is easily apparent to others. But then again, I like box wine so maybe I do have issues.

probably blue, this has nothing to do with your posts in this thread but I thought I should tell you, your avatar is not attractive.Truly it gets on my nerves, it looks like that cat is being tormented or abused. I just thought I should tell you.Actually I can hardly bare to look at it

I apologize I did not mean to be rude, just distracted by some odd comments above by two posters. (I still find your avatar disturbing) What exactly do you want to replicate on your piano? Is the action on your piano OK?

As I understood it Emery is interested in potential improvements to his Petrof. So are Fazioli, Yamaha and Phoenix as well as Fabbrini and his Steinways.

They all focus on minute or not so minute adjustments to their actions. There may be some lessons there.

From what Fazioli say purity and richness of sound should come from the strings. Their design differs from other European brands like Bosendorfer and Steingraeber (used by Phoenix) which colour the sound with resonances from the woodwork. I think Petrof are in that camp. Yamaha now too. Fazioli are different not better or worse.

Phoenix Steingraebers have thin spruce, carbon fibre or Kevlar soundboards. With their Phoenix agraffes Richard Dain says they are twice as efficient at converting energy into sound, 8% v 4%. Hence in part their long sustain.

However, I'd say their "sound signature" after the attack has has more to do with the acoustic decoupling Steingraeber build into the pianos for Richard. My guess is Petrof with acoustic decoupling will be better not worse.

Oh no. Now we've got Withindale started on his decoupling theories again.