Give your opinion about favorite Pianotq preset.

I am delighted with the F.E. Blanchet harpsichord, it has given me much pleasure. It has been a particular delight to play the wonderful keyboard works of G.F. Handel, which aren't generally too difficult (at least in comparison to J.S. Bach's) and also they leave lots of opportunities for improvisation which is fun. I recommend the two Chaccones in G, HWV 425 & 442 - fantastic!.

One key to the remarkable success of the F.E.B. preset is its choice of temperament, i.e. Werckmeister III. I had little interest in temperament before now, but the marvellously pure consonances available are an unalloyed pleasure to the ear and deeply satisfying to play.

I now see why many musicians of that time were so reluctant to give up these tunings, and in fact I would even go so far as to say equal temperament is a poor second choice in much of the Baroque repertoire. Handel appears rarely to go beyond 2 or 3 sharps or flats, and so there is very rarely a problem. The key of Ab has some strangenesses in W-III, as does C-minor, but one gets to live with the occasional odd harmony.

My main preset is a modified Grand C1-Mellow, but that's pretty mainstream.

P.S. I would partially agree with miki about the high frequency components. Certainly after playing the F.E.B. for a bit and then switching back to a "normal" piano it sounds really dull, as if someone turned the treble tone control down!

There's  a poll in this forum, started by the developers, that asks everyone to check their favorite preset and then comment. Commenting there, even though the additional instruments like the Erard are not listed, might let the developers more easily compile data about who's using what and why.

But I wonder--are we falling into a bad habit by choosing one preset, as though we're on an old rompler that only had one good piano?

More generally, I hope more people will try all of the presets for longer and experiment with editing them--I tried the M1-Rock once or twice long ago and neglected it for ages before returning to find good edits. (Largely by applying eq and other settings from other fxp's as a point of departure and then making other small changes.)