Steingraeber & Söhne 168 ▸ https://www.merriammusic.com/product/...
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We’re taking a look at the Steingraeber Phoenix 168, an interesting piano that utilizes carbon fiber technology to create a truly unique sound.

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Today we're in front of one of our Industries more unique examples, a 2008 Steingraeber Phoenix Edition 168. This is an ongoing collaboration where Steingraeber produces the raw instrument, and then it goes off to a secondary company where a lot of these modifications are made as a cobranded product.

What has made these rather famous, if not infamous depending on who you ask, is that they use an extensive amount of carbon fiber and other interesting technologies and approaches to generate what is genuinely a very unique tone and playing experience. When you get in front of a carbon fiber piano like this it is a sizable shift away from what we're all used to with traditional pianos, and it gives you a completely different experience, both from a dynamic perspective as well as a character perspective.

The piano sound is so different from what I would normally get from a piano of this size, and even a Steingraeber of this size. The dynamic responsiveness is definitely exaggerated over what you get on a normal piano, so the leap from like a mezzo forte up is much less than what you would get sometimes on a normal spruce soundboard instrument. Another unique element is the sustain, it is extremely impressive on this instrument.

When you get right into the upper ranges of the dynamics, you start to get a very different kind of formant or a tonal shape to the sound, rather than kind of maintaining the same type of character throughout the whole dynamic range, it actually shifts so you start to get almost equal amounts of most of your upper partials happening in conjunction with your fundamental. This has a prominent fundamental compared to the first second or third partial, which makes sense because so much of this instrument is geared towards creating tone in the most efficient way possible.

There's also a very different bridging system. You've got a completely different style of hitch pin in the back, and you've got the string passing through a mechanism on the bridge which essentially squeezes the string down onto the bridge surface without the need for significant levels of downbearing. So that, in conjunction with the carbon fiber soundboard, is what's giving us this impressive sustain length.

The length of string behind the bridge is left free to ring out, so it is a type of duplex I suppose. It's not a tuned duplex scale, but it is quite active. There's also a front duplex in the top two sections of the frame.
I also notice a few things about the lower register on this instrument, you get that same relationship between the fundamental and your upper partials even in your lower octaves, and so the clarity in the base is pretty high especially given the size of this instrument. In the middle of the piano and at normal midrange dynamics, the character of the tone doesn't feel dramatically different from a normal instrument.

You've also got a soft pedal, which is pretty unique, as it manages to combine the function of what would normally be the third and the fourth pedal if you had a grand piano with the fourth pedal. If you press the third pedal, you get the hammer shift, but then if you keep pressing down, it actually raises the hammer height .

SO for my first time in front of a carbon fiber soundboard, I'd have to say that it did not disappoint.

We’d be really interested to hear about other people's experiences either with a carbon fiber soundboard or some of these metal bridging systems that we're seeing here, so feel free to leave us a comment if you’ve had any experiences with these innovations.

Thank you so much for joining us for the video, I hope you've enjoyed this look at a very unique instrument within our industry.

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