Re:Steinway's 600,000th piano, the Fibonacci
by organsnyder on Monday August 31, 2015 @02:50PM
(#10148371)
The same thing has happened with pipe organs. There, the cost of a physical instrument is much larger—modest instruments are well over six figures, with many instruments reaching $1 million. Digital organs have found a place in many venues—especially those, such as concert halls, that only use them infrequently. However, there is still a thriving community of builders churning out new pipe organs, and a bank of speakers still can't match the power of thousands of individual pipes.
I saw an organ in the Netherlands that dates to the 1700's, and has been played by many legendary composers (including Haydn and Mozart, IIRC). While it's obviously seen continuous maintenance, it's still playable and used for performances today.
It's relatively trivial to do a minor refurb to replace and realign hammers/felts, rather more expensive to replace the tunings pegs and strings, quite a big deal to do all the above and replace the soundboard too.
Gf's instrument is getting near to needing a complete rebuild, which we're estimating will cost around £6k and take a few months.
I can appreciate the interest in digital instruments, but nothing sounds close to the sonic richness, weight, projection, and detail of the real thing. You certainly can't play classical piano music on a sampled keyboard and have it fill a concert hall the way you can with a Steinway Model D.