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Funny, I see these videos and hear a big difference in terms of the sustain, even taking into account the clearly different acoustics of the spaces and methods of recording.

I think the videos present an interesting comparison, since in both videos the performers are 'milking' the sustain of the pianos. But I do perceive the tone on the piano with the standard bridge to have less body and sustain.

The Stonetone pianos have a demonstration video where two Baldwins of the same model are played in the same room -- one with the Stonetone bridge and the other without.

There was a thread a while back (I'm too lazy to find it) where the stone bridge was discussed. In that thread, I was on the side of people who were skeptical about the stone bridge because of some apparent implications of physics for this kind of bridge. The mass of the granite is obviously much greater than wood. This would seem to suggest that the sustain will be longer, but at the expense of initial sound volume (the energy in the string can't dissipate into sound as quickly because it has to move a heavier mass).

However, the videos have stuck in my memory because the tone seems to me to be compelling for a certain taste. And the attack doesn't seem to be weak, as the assumptions I just mentioned would suggest. So I think the assumptions based on those physical factors I mentioned might be leaving some factor out.

It makes me wonder about the design and construction used by Fazioli in their bridges.

Has anyone experienced F308 Model? How do you feel when you play a big composition? Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky etc...

I've played the 308 in Chicago at Pianoforte Chicago. It is a most remarkable piano. It is quieter than some of the 9 foot neighbors in the same showroom, but can of course project considerable volume (without straining the ears) if you desire. The most amazing thing was the action, which on all Faziolis are highly responsive, but I have never played such an action where all the bass notes are as easy to play as the treble notes. It seems Fazioli has completely eliminated the issue of weight in these notes. I imagine it would be easy to play all the Chopin-Godowsky etudes on this piano, including the ones where Godowsky puts the difficult technical passages in the left hand.

The tone on all Faziolis coming out of the factory in Sacile is carefully regulated and each piano must pass a personal test by Paolo Fazioli. In that respect, the tone he prefers emphasizes the fundamental of each note, which some people will describe as clinical or cold. The piano does not need to sound that way when it sits in your home. Any decent technician can work with the hammers and voice them to emphasize more of the harmonics. Second, there is a screw/bolt that can be adjusted which changes the pressure on the soundboard (I think I'm describing this accurately). This alters the tone and it might be an illusion, but the volume coming from the piano seems to change as well. Third, the aliquots are all moveable, and Paolo provides the technicians with a tool that makes it easy to adjust these. You can make sure that the harmonics coming from this section of the string are pure, or if you wish you can muddy them slightly by having them a bit off key (a slightly high or low fifth, for example).

Paolo - who is an amazing combination of entrepreneur, inventor, scientist, artist, and gentleman - is constantly changing and enhancing his instruments. The fourth pedal on the 308 has a new feature that allows you to shift it slightly and lock it in; tap it again and it releases the pedal. The half-blow feature can therefore be locked, leaving your foot to use the una corda or sostenuto for further tonal possibilities. Paolo did not invent the locked pedal mechanism - it's been around for a very long time on other pianos.

My F228 is over twenty years old and the soundboard is beginning to blossom in some wonderful ways. The tone is getting richer without the loss of clarity that characterizes the Fazioli. Since the wood in the soundboard is from the same trees used for many centuries by Italian luthiers such as Stradivarius, I am hoping that over the next 100 - 200 years the soundboard will continue to evolve as it has done in violins and cellos. That will be for my descendants to enjoy.

Ohh noo... It is common knowledge to "all-american" (TM) pianomakers ( ;-)) sorry ma pals..) that soundboard wood will not last any longer than 30 yrs.. oops. .. was it 50 yrs?
;-)

Whenever you go to Steinway to let them restore your old Steinway grand and it is older than 1980, they will extract the old soundboard and install a new one..

= = =

I own a S&S concert grand (age 135 yrs) with original soundboard. Once it had some six gaps.. It was then refurbished in a "european manner" by v-cutting and glueing-in wooden strips. But this soundboard once was made from Appalachian white spruce, a material which was no longer available after the 1920ies..

The saga of the forests in the Val di Fiemme and the Strad sound wood also was corrected partially. The old Italians partly bought wood from the people of Venice who once got it from the mountaon ranges of the peninsula Istria, now Slovenia and Croatia. Then the wood was stored in water bassins (ca. three years) where anaerobic mushrooms and bacteria cracked nearly all woodden fibre glue. Then the wood was sold to the violin makers. They themselves stored the wood again and let it dry.

It was the lightest and best spruce sound wood ever and is it still today. Lowest specific weight you can find of any needle wood!

The preparation method by letting the wood rot and let the fibre glue be dissolved by anaerobic bacteria was (re-) explored by a swiss man some years before - now it is knowledge of some ultra-high class violin makers of today who again sell violins of extraordinary craftmanship (five figure prices, one or two figures lower than an ancient Strad..) - and with extraordinary light ultra-high class sound wood.

Sometimes I dream of an experts work to produce a soundboard by these violinmaker new-old methods and with wood from Istria, three years stored in a water bassin..

My 0.02 EURO cents

=== completely OT of Fazioli and wood.. ===

BTW I ordered to refurbish a light set of old Steinway hammers fom the 1930ies (with this remarkable grey felt on the base of the hammer). The set also was most probably extracted (like the soundboards) at the factory, it once was a victim of Vertigris.. copper corrosion at the wires. But hammers of nice state and shape - light..

We built in by a test run three of these ancient hammersm to compare the sound with the neighbpourin tones - and it was a "hammer hard" astonishment for both of us, me & the very experienced tech: what a blooming sound! absolutely NO comparison to the freshly installed (2.5 yrs before) hammers of this thick high-density felt and broad, heavy hammer heads for actual D size grands..

The old set formely had Vertigris, (no: has still..) but it will be re-fitted with new wires and felt bearings, the hammers will be slightly shaped.

It will be a delayed Christmas gift for me when the piano technician (a Bosendorfer apprentice and 40 yrs experienced technician) will come and install this set in March or April.

I will report afterwards.

Sorry Numerian for having "piratized" the thread..
;-)

Interesting.

Always thought there was more 'saga'than truth to the matter.

For example many violin makers have experimented around in the past with Val di Fiemme Ciresa spruce without getting anywhere close to the sound of Stradivarius.

Swiss research has meantime proven that the special wood used for Stradivarius had less to do with any one particular type wood but the influence of fungi [mushrooms] grown at a time of rather unique metereological conditions during same era.

http://www.aponet.de/aktuelles/kurioses/2012-09-pilz-laesst-geige-wie-stradivari-klingen.html

We once had an Estonia grand made using same Ciresa wood in soundboard - hardly any difference.

Except 'price'...



Norbert

There's magic in the mushrooms!

No, no - our Estonia was 'clean'

Norbert

I am always puzzled when PW posters severely criticize really high-end Tier 1 pianos that often are priced in the six figures. Can they really be that bad? I know every pianist has his own preferences for type of tone or touch, and that is fine, but some posters talk down some really extraordinary pianos like they are junk. Are they just snobs? I can't imagine that a Fazioli piano couldn't be voiced to please almost any performer. Maybe I am naive, but I would take one if they were inexpensive. I just don't have that kind of money. Don't get me wrong, I love my Mason-Hamlin BB and have no plans to ever replace it. But a Fazioli in the same size would be incredibly expensive in comparison!

I loved the story of the 1930s Steinway hammers. Maybe Steinway should start experimenting with verdigris on their hammers. Or maybe it's the fact that the felt is 80 years old.

The Frederick Collection has many pianos over 100 years old with what appear to be original soundboards. They seem to be functioning quite well with very distinctive tonal properties. Of course, the consensus is that soundboards lose their crowns after 50 years or so and turn dead, assuming they could avoid cracks. Is the consensus wrong? Are there some fantastic Steinways or Mason & Hamlins from the 1920s still in use? That would give us better reason to think Faziolis could last as long too.

Interesting how we went from Fazioli to dealers sneaking in plugs for Story & Clark and Estonia. We even got in a little dig at Steinway. This may be the perfect PW thread!

And BTW, I thought Sam's Story & Clark sounded pretty nice.

This may, indeed, be the perfect PW thread.

Please keep in mind that the Estonia's were under the influence of *magic mushrooms.* I think that the Faziolis are influenced by something else before they self-deport.

Norbert, THX to that link.

Some little corrections from the article in german language.. ;-) (if wanted, I could do a rough transation to EN?)

The fungi made the wooden cell structure thinner along of some years – but they kept the structure. Thinner cells but still stable.

The meteorolgical conditions of these years were not conneted with the special fungus but with the fact of very dense wood grown in a “little ice age” of that time. So the Stradivarius and Guarneri and Amati violin makers had wood available which was not unique because of the fungus but unique because of the trees (yet planted or grown up) then having standed the “little ice age” of that times, resulting in very dense circular structures of small cells et cetera in the sounding wood (many growth rings per inch).

If there were young trees planted within the "ice age", they would not have grown up. The precondition was to have the trees yet living - and then to have them "cool down" in the little ice age..

Conditions which sound irregular: you'll need to plant the "false" wood (for the environmental conditions) - and then let it grow slowly at "too cold" conditions.

Difficult.. Seems to be a process which maybe cannot be industrialized or exploited for best sound wood..

And we would have to evaluate/estimate how much of the "good sound content" is built-in by the fungus thinning the cellular walls, and how much "good sound content" is coming from the "little ice age" wood..

Google does a great job on this interesting article:

Fungus can sound like Stradivari violin
You do not need millions of euros for an original Stradivarius violin spend to get this special sound. It is enough to treat the wood of a new instrument with special fungi.

Swiss wood researcher Professor Francis WMR Schwarze from St. Gallen has discovered fungi (Physisporinus vitreus and Xylaria longipes) that decompose the two major for violin making spruce and maple woods, so that their sound quality can be improved. The peculiarity of these fungi is to degrade the cell walls of the wood gradually and make thinner, Black said at a lecture at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin. Even in the late stages of wood decay remains a rigid framework obtained via sound waves could still spread directly. The wood also remains the same as before the break-resistant fungal treatment.

DISPLAY
In a blind test was a violin made of treated wood against a genuine Stradivarius from 1711. With surprising results: Both the jury, as well as the majority of the audience thought the new violin for the genuine Stradivarius. "Of course, such a procedure is always subjective," admits Black. For euphony there is just no clear scientific measurement methods.

The famous violin maker Antonio Stradivari used during the late 17th and early 18th Century a particular wood that had grown during a cold period between 1645 and 1715. By long winters and cool summers, the wood grew very slowly and then, so it had a low density and a high flexural strength.

I think you can thank the tension resonator device, or spider, on the older Masons that still have some crown. I know there is no proof, but there seem to be a lot of them still holding up. If the soundboard is still good on my BB in 50 years, I won't know because I would be 113 years old then.

A friend of mine who makes violins and once brought a Strad to my house said that all these people who do research on the wood in them just do not want to admit that the guy knew what he was doing when he made violins.

THX Guapo G.

I would have done same on demand ;-) , get a pre translation via google, and smoothen the result.

PLS Give me Istria wood and a water bassin with fungus. Then an experienced Cremona violin maker with some good ideas how to build up a piano soundboard from that fungus wood stuff - extremely thin but resistant.

Maybe to build up a wooden folio without crown, with no pre tensioning load on top of the crown against the string tension? And for this purpose to omit the zigzag pattern of a conventional bridge?

To use bridge agraffes for a flat membrane?

I don't know. But I would love to hear a result in my life time - on a veritable nine footer.

What about this australian guy who uses flat glass as a soundboard? to myknowledge with bridge agraffes.

or what about the carbon fibre sound board "Phoenix" from Florida?

or try similar with sound wood, the maybe-best ever? maybe hand picked Siberian wood, gained by helicopter harvesting..?..

I read a book of a Munich based violin maker who goes with a chainsaw and an axt and with a helping friend into the highest wood regions in the alps, where no machinery can go, to pickout HIS sound wood personally. They test the trees by applying the flat side of the axt,: how it sounds.

Then apply the "Perry Knize" speech: a tree dies. A piano (violin) is born.

Bring this wood down the hill by ultra hard work. A MUCH BIGGER effort to gain the best sound wood possible.., compared with industrialized harvesting in Canada, Alaska, Val di Fiemme.

Or am I wrong?

Ah...! so its the fungus amongus!...

The fit and finish of the Faziolis are beautiful. I looked at the 228 before I settled on my current Bösendorfer 225, and the piano looked better under the hood. Many of the parts are gold-plated, etc. (I don't know if this is "standard" or an option.)

However I preferred the mellower sound of the Bösendorfer. If you want a high-quality "bright" sound, I think the Fazioli is a good choice (and it's slightly cheaper than Bösendorfer :-) )

I wasn't able to compare them back-to-back, and I didn't pay much attention to the concert sizes when I was evaluating, because I was looking for something for the home.

(And greetings from Porto, Portugal! I'm here to hear a concert at the Casa De Musica; I'll be back in the states tomorrow if my flight isn't canceled because of the General Strike!)

Faziolis are first class instruments, in some ways in a class of their own. You may like or not like their sound but fit and finish is incredible.

By same token,Ciresa soundboards, while also first rate, are not sufficiently unique to guarantee unique tone.

Several other makers including Sauter use them in some of their models, yet the pianos have entirely different sound characteristics.



Others like Steingraeber don't use Ciresa wood but their pianos are perhaps the closest to Fazili sound I know.



The conclusion I have long come to believe that it's not just one particular component that makes an instrument great similiarly as great grapes don't 'by themselves' make for a great wine.

It's the combination of many other factors, many of them a secret by maker.

This IMHO doesn't take away but adds to the mystique and beauty of something truly special such as the top pianos of the world.

Norbert

Wait... I thought we aren't supposed to buy "Mussolini pianos.". Or maybe that's iceberg lettuce. One gets confused these days...