A brand new Steinway from VSL: 1887 model D concert grand

CyberGene Congratulations!!! I felt the same way!!! If they decide to tweak the Vienna Assistant app, I might give this vintage Steinway a try.

David Lai I haven’t bought it yet and I’m not in the market for a new virtual piano at all, so I doubt I will buy it soon. But if I was choosing a VSL piano, this would be it.

OlivierW The sound itself is warm, but you can tell this Steinway isn’t perfectly restored and regulated.

That's complete nonsense - I should know because I am the owner and I am not completely clueless when it comes to perfect preparation of a concert grand.

I just tried it — the dynamics feel more realistic and better balanced by default than the recent VSL Steinway D-274. It has a beautiful, very “Hamburg” sound — congratulations to the tuner and the technician who prepared the piano, they did a great job.

However, the playability of the resonances doesn’t feel real, and their “sympathetic resonance” option still doesn’t work properly — it’s basically fake and sounds terrible when enabled. The sustain and sympathetic resonances aren’t really simulated at all, just long sustain samples that don’t allow for true repedaling behavior within the resonance.

In short, it’s interesting in the demos, but when you actually play it, it still lacks the realism and responsiveness of instruments like the Modern D. This piano could have been excellent if VSL had made the effort to properly program the behavior and resonance of a real piano — at the level of the UVI interface by VI Labs, like the Modern D or Modern U. Beautiful work from the technician, but not from VSL’s software team.

It has a genuine Hamburg tone, but the software simulation is disappointing — and in 2025, that’s difficult to accept given how far competitors like VI Labs and NI (Galaxy, Noire, etc.) have advanced in terms of programming realism.

I will improve it with my Soluce : VSL + PIANOTEQ 9 resonance (SR and repedalling an Sustain) . sonne my logic file

OlivierW you can clearly tell the hammers are worn out.

You sound like a real expert - which unfortunately you are not.

The hammers are brand new replicas by Abel and the voicing of them is simply outstandingly beautiful, because I afforded myself the luxury of hiring a real concert technician for the project.

But my thoughts go to the excellent technician who prepared and tuned this piano, and to the engineer who selected the velocity layers — great work from them. And the excellent Sampling .

As for the rest, the software and the player itself are disappointing compared to VI Labs’ solutions. And yet, I have many ideas to help improve VSL’s software, especially now that tools like ChatGPT can speed up development.

I really don’t understand why the sympathetic resonance simulation still doesn’t work properly, and why there’s still no true sustain repedaling — especially when compared to the competition.

Regards,

Olivier F.

clavierhaus Please read my post again 🙂 I’m actually agreeing with you — so let’s just stay cool, polite, and humble.

clavierhaus

i wanted to say thanks for the instrument and of course preparation, to my ears subjectively this is the best vsl piano to date, i love the sound and the mic choice, everything 🙂

clavierhaus Congratulations on having your piano be the basis for a new virtual instrument! I guess it might make sense, for those of us trying to forecast VSL's new offerings, to pay attention to which pianos you have taken under your wing. 🙂

OlivierW read again my post

I did and it still says "you can clearly tell the hammers are worn out.".

clavierhaus It was just a translation bug — now deleted and edited. Please stay humble about expertise when you don’t know the background of the people you’re talking to. And I have great respect for you — you clearly love pianos and you’re a passionate expert. But please treat other passionate people with the same respect and be open to different points of view. It’s not the end of the world. I’m disappointed by the software, not the real piano or your work.

is it just me or the demos are better then vsl usual ones? i can actually listen to them without wanting to break my speakers

pianow yes.still downloading full mics.std mics just sounds like better ver of pianoverse.

OlivierW It was just a translation bug — now deleted and edited.

I have no idea what a weird translation bug could produce "you can clearly tell the hammers are worn out.", but so be it.

Is Hamburg a translation bug as well? Because this is a pure New York Steinway designed in a transitional phase between 1884 an 1892 by Theodore Steinway and it has directly been delivered to England for the sale and the shellac finish.

This piano has never been anywhere close to Hamburg, which makes it distinctly different from my 1886 Steinway B, which got its final assembly in the Hamburg factory as one can see from some details like German handwriting and "Depot der Steinway Pianos New York" on the plate.

I'd nevertheless kindly ask you not to schoolmaster me about humbleness when accuracy in wording is important and you came up with a delusional statement about the hammers which you could and should have checked before posting it, if English is not your first language.

Let's leave it at that. I can see that you're continuing about all this in the pianoworld forum as well and maybe Paul has something to say about it. I am only the guy with the piano.

My gut feeling is that this one sounds less close to a Steinway, or at least less close to what I used to play on … But nevertheless it has a great tone, nice warm woody sound with character and liveliness.

Immediately becomes my top 1 VSL piano.

clavierhaus thanks for this post. I am tired of reading these negative / lecturing posts as well. Piano is about pleasure, passion and solidarity. I am tired of all the violence and negative comments here.

Let me get this straight. A guy—who is directly involved in the product's creation—comes here to announce a brand new VST on the PianoClack forum. This is an incredible opportunity for the community to ask him anything!

But how do we "welcome" him?

1. @jiang immediately complains about the Chinese origin of the microphones, then takes extra effort to argue his point against @pianow's defense.

2. @David Lai is initially excited about the una corda, but then kills any momentum by criticizing the VST's lack of accessibility features in the Vienna Assistant app.

3. @OlivierW jumps in and starts complaining about missing resonances. As anyone who reads this or the PianoTeq forum knows, he is obsessed with "fixing" resonances. He posts not once, but three times with the same core complaint, explicitly mentioning the competitor VI Labs in every single one.

4. Only @pianow manages to write a few nice words, thanking the person who invested who knows how much time, money, and passion, only to have them read this negativity on the FIRST DAY of the release.

This internet...

Guys, even if you have an issue with the product, can you please just wait a few days for others to try it out and form their own opinions before you ruin the excitement for them? Is this really too much to ask?

And please, open your own thread and post your complaint there. To pollute the announcement thread like this is, in my worldview, simply evil. You either have no compassion for the developer, or you are intentionally trying to destroy the product and harm sales with your comments.

Who buys an old Steinway? How stupid... I would have spent a lot of money on a properly recorded and implemented new one. OMG. There's really no help for them anymore.

pc-king Maybe your are merely trolling, but there is really no way to effectively tell, so I'll assume that you are serious. I, for one, do prefer the sound(s) which was/were cultivated a century ago. Having grown up with a grand from the 1880s I have come to love the more colourful timbre of that era. One of my favourite VIs is the "Maverick" by NI, and that instrument is from more than 100 years ago.

locture It is their best piano since the original, non-synchron version of the Vienna Imperial, as una corda samples are found in both.