Topic: Yamaha Transacoustic
While staying for the Labor Day weekend at my parents' house, I went to the local Yamaha store yesterday while my dad was going to a Lowrey Organ group lesson. While there, I played various pianos and synthetic/sampled pianos. My favorite was the Transacoustic, a parlor-sized grand that has an electronic component where it can play 19 different voices (amongst them a 9' Yamaha CFX as well as four different pipe organs) via two transducers mated directly to the bottom of the soundboard. These can be played at varying volume levels either instead of or in addition to the 5'3" acoustic piano that is the heart of the system. The richness of the combined acoustic piano while mated to the CFX sampled piano is luxuriant in a way no real acoustic piano is, yet it is barely detectable as anything other than an acoustic piano to the unsuspecting ear.
If they are open again today, I will see if I can bring in a set of MIDI cables and see if they let me use Pianoteq from the MIDI out, running it back into the soundboard-speaker as the output from Pianoteq. Now THAT should be something to behold, especially amongst the variety of Pianoteq models to play.
- David