Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards How to make a perfect DP with grand look and VST and VPC

Since I am looking for the piano, and I love the grand shape, I invented something.
How to make a perfect DP when using the VPC1 action.

Ingrdients:
- VPC1 or other keyboard that you like
- computer powerful enough to handel VST instrument
- old grand piano

Now I will tell you for what you need the grand. You can buy the cheapest and damaged grand, until it's soundboard it's not cracked. Yes, it's soundboard needs to be all and that's all. Now, you need to buy few good transducers and proper amplifier to it. Than, you just need to screw the transducers to the soundboard and the job is done you will need few ones for differnt frequencies of course so difference sizes. Best would be to have the crossover to split the frequencies.

You need also to package nicely the vpc into the grand cabinet, and change the pedals.
How do you think, does it have chance to work and play well?
Of course, this would take real around of time to do, but the results could be astonishing.

Without speakers of course, only she soundboard.
And the best solution for the VST would be good tablet ling somewhere near the sheet stand, just because they are silent and computers make noise.

Yamaha has done something like this. They've demonstrated it on a grand, but have only announced it shipping in an upright.

http://usa.yamaha.com/news_events/pianos_keyboard/yamaha_u1ta_pe_upright_piano/

You may be interested in some past threads related to your subject.

First Thread

Second Thread

I think there may have been others as well. It's a common and neat idea: use a worthless grand body and a nice DP to make a piano that sounds like a DP and works like a grand. I think there may be more to it than attaching transducers to the soundboard, though. Typically we have people attaching speakers in an array similar to that of the AvantGrands.

Usually when there is a "dead grand" isn't the problem with the soundboard? I'm not a piano tech, but that was my impression.

Sounds like a fun project that might make for a great instrument, but not the road to a perfect DP. At the very least, the underlying samples/models need to have discreet multiple channels, be run through a DSP that understands what to do with those multiple channels and played back through a system that can output those multiple channels in a convincing way.

(Edit: Sorry I missed part of the original post about not using speakers.)

I think about this from time to time.

One thing I consider: the soundboard in a piano is basically a big speaker. It is installed under stress such that it vibrates in accordance to the string frequencies.

A speaker is the same thing. Further, digital pianos record the the sound that is produced by the piano soundboard, so the material 'signature' in the sound is already captured. By using a piano soundboard, you are adding the signature of another piano, on top of the one that is already in the recorded sample.

Because of this, I don't know that a physical piano soundboard is what is needed - at least in the same manner it is used in an acoustic piano. I think speaker size/quantity/placement in a box (box meaning some wooden structure, not necessarily enclosed or sealed) made of the appropriate materials would suffice.

Obviously these are just my own thoughts and I could be wrong. It would be awesome to be able to test all this out. I don't really have or want to spend the time to really figure it all out

(Edit: one thing to think about is if you are using an old, beat up piano, you will get sounds from that piano. I have heard many pianos that I would NOT want to listen to!)