Tony, when you talk about hearing this or that you have to specify if you're talking about playing at the gig or is this playing at home. Playing in a 5th wheel trailor is so far from what you hear in a gig situation I wouldn't even mention it. It has no bearing whatsoever on a gig situation.

The other thing is piano is the single most difficult instrument to get dialed in correctly. Keyboard manufacturers put great effort into making their pianos sound as perfect as possible in a music store or though headphones. The problem with that is music stores have them all set up to play through high end studio monitors. These powered speaker systems are expensive and designed to sound great in a studio or a music store. They are not stage speakers. Same for your 5.1 home theater system. Not a stage setup. Don't even put that comparison in the discussion.

Even the best PA systems need some serious dialing in to get a good piano sound because the design of high powered stage systems and home systems are completely apples and oranges. You would blow up even the best high end home stereo speakers with the first big chord you hit on stage. This is because home systems are designed to play prerecorded music that has already been professionally mixed in a studio, there's no transient peaks in it. Those have been limited out but not so when you're playing live. All you have to is set your piano for a medium level but in the middle of a song suddenly grab a big two handed chord and really hit it and bam, there goes your tweeters. Commercial systems build speakers to handle those peaks at the cost of fine sound quality.

Mac is correct like he always is. Stereo piano is a waste of time in a gig situation. The only time I like having a stereo rig on stage which I use all the time, is for the tremolo sound on EP's and the leslie effect for B3. Especially for the leslie the stereo rig makes a big difference but not for acoustic piano. Even then it's mostly for me because I have my two JBL's set behind me and a few feet to each side so I'm right in the middle of the stereo field but 10-15 feet out front it's lost. This is for small to medium jazz gigs. For larger rock gigs, that stereo effect is completely lost and I just set up my rig for monitoring while my keyboard is going to the mains.

Just wait until you're set up at the gig, show up early and do a full power sound check by bringing a 20 foot cord and put your keyboard in the middle of the room if you can. The reason I say full power is amateurs try to do a sound check at easy listening low volume when nobody's in the room and that is false too. As soon as people come in the power goes up and everything changes. You need to crank it (albeit briefly of course!) and don't care if you bother the kitchen staff and waitresses. Once you've done this a couple of times your ears will get trained to the difference between what it sounds like on stage and what it sounds like out front and you can compensate for it.

The conclusion to this is no matter what you do, no matter how many different PA's you go through you will never get that killer full grand piano sound you get at home through your headphones or studio monitors. Just the nature of the beast. Try to remember some live concerts you went to where someone was playing a real grand piano. It's all mic'd up and going through the house system. Unless it's pure solo piano like Horowitz playing at Carnegie Hall someone playing with a full band in a noisy bar is losing all that fine, delicate piano sound as well even using a real grand on stage.

Bob

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