C. Bechstein M/P 192 Grand Piano Review and Demo by Merriam Pianos🎹

Introduction

The C. Bechstein A 192 ( formerly C. Bechstein MP192) Is Amongst the World’s Very Finest 6′ Pianos. It’s Size Makes It Ideal for Mmerost Home Settings, and Its Length Means that A Clear, Sustaining, and Full Bass Tone Is Always at Your Disposal. Few Instruments Will Match the Long List of Industry-Topping Design Techniques Used in This Piano…While the Fazioli F-183, the Bosendorfer 185, or The Hamburg Steinway All Have Common Elements with The M/P 192, None Combine as Many in A Single Instrument.  And That’s Before Any Consideration for Equipment Modernity, Wood Processing, and The Incredibly Deep Pool of Talent that C. Bechstein Draws Upon.  An Instrument of Complete Quality.

C. Bechstein M/P192 Grand Piano Review Video Transcription

Thanks for being here with us! In this article, we’ll be covering C. Bechstein’s famous 6 foot Grand Piano – the A192, handmade in Germany. Before we dive into the A192, a little bit of background information on C. Bechstein; The company was founded by Carl Bechstein in 1853 and continue to manufacture high quality, luxurious pianos to this day. The durability of the C. Bechstein grand piano is long-established, and Bechstein continues to be world-renowned for their high-end pianos and that incorporates the absolute best manufacturing processes possible with a wealth of craftsmanship very few others can rival. C. Bechstein stands among an elite few at the vanguard of piano making.

The A192 is part of the C. Bechstein Concert Series, also referred to as the Masterpiece series. This series represents a collection of several acoustic pianos that are right at the very top of the manufacturing quality range that Bechstein is capable of producing. At the C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik, experienced piano-makers build instruments of exceptional quality, each of them provided with a distinctive musical personality. The A192 in the series at 6’3″, larger than the 5’5″ L167. Above the A192 is the 7′ B212, semi-concert grand piano 7’6″ C232 and then, of course, the D282 9’2 full concert grand.

A192 Design/Materials Overview:

Let’s get right into the Bechstein Model A192 and why this is one of the top 6 foot pianos on the planet. For starters, I really like the size of this instrument and there are a couple of features present that really excite me as a piano player. The first of these features that immediately jumps out is the soundboard. The spruce used for the soundboard is harvested from the Val di Fiemme forest in Italy. This is exactly the same source of spruce that Stradivarius used for his violins. Fazioli, another high-end piano manufacturer are the only other company that sources soundboards from the Val di Fiemme. All of this is to say the spruce is highly exclusive – very consistent, dried at a very low percentage of humidity and it’s very light as well. Added together, these features result in a soundboard that is extremely lively and doesn’t take a lot of energy to activate, and Bechstein’s membrane-soundboard-system retains the excellent tension and vibration characteristics for decades.

A second feature that is common among some of the very best pianos in the world is the presence of a vertically laminated bridge. A vertically laminated bridge consists of multiple plies of a highly engineered hardwood that are all laminated together to form this kind of vertical highway to transmit the vibration from strings down through the bridge to the soundboard.  Vertically laminated bridges are something that Steinway & Sons first innovated more than a hundred years ago and their inclusion is pretty much considered best practice today in the finest instruments. On the top of the bridge is a maple cap that collects energy to anchor the bridge pins – another really critical feature.

All of this adds up to equal an instrument that is highly stable, but also capable of transmitting huge amounts of energy from the strings down into the soundboard. And of course, the A192 also benefits from C. Bechstein’s brand new internal hammer factory. All of Bechstein’s hammers are now hand made in house, the first time in many years that this has been the case. Very few manufacturers make their own hammers, so it was a pretty big deal in the industry when Bechstein ventured to do so once again. What’s also remarkable is that they custom-make different sets of hammers for every single instrument they build, meaning every set of hammers are exactly weighted and shaped for their specific model.

The wood Bechstein uses for the hammers in the grands of their Masterpiece series is dark walnut, which is quite unusual. Dark walnut is an ultra-premium wood due to it’s scarcity, but Bechstein has chosen it for very good reason as walnut is lighter and denser than mahogany, which is the material you’ll typically find in premium pianos. Walnut also produces a different tonal quality, which was surely another consideration in Bechstein’s decision to use walnut instead of mahogany.

Piano Action:

The piano action is one of the most important parts of any piano as it functions as the user’s mechanical interface – the action is how the player tells the piano what they want it to do. Building a good action is really difficult. The A192 has over 500 hours of manufacturing time applied to it and a good chunk of those hours are devoted to the assembly, weighting, and regulation of the action. I can tell you that even right out of the box without touching these pianos the actions are perfect – beautifully fluid, weighted perfectly, and just a real delight to play.

While the parts for the action are supplied by German company Renner, Bechstein designs and assembles them in their Berlin factory. Many other high-end European manufacturers use actions built entirely by Renner, so the fact that Bechstein designs and builds their own actions is somewhat unique for high-end European made pianos. Bechstein builds their own actions for all of their pianos, but their absolute top professional action, the Gold Line Action, is reserved for the pianos in the Masterpiece series.

Piano Tone:

I can say confidently that the A192 has one of my favorite scale designs,  it’s just beautifully balanced, which is of course another crucial reason why it sounds so good. If there’s one word I would use to describe the tone it would be color. There are so many overtones and wonderful colors contributing to what is definitely a super unique and distinct tonal profile.

A lot of people don’t realize that a given piano tone is actually made up of seven or eight harmonics that are all combining for your ear to hear what it hears as a single note. When I play a C for example, you’re not hearing just one defined pitch, but rather multiples of that frequency and specific harmonics of that frequency in different ratios. What I really love about the A192 is the almost perfectly even distribution of the volume of all of those harmonics right from the fundamental right up through the seventh harmonic.

Many pianos tend to emphasize either the very top of the harmonic range as well as the fundamentals and sort of cut out some in the middle. Some don’t even make any attempt to do even this because there’s just not enough engineering time and quite frankly, budget to apply that type of scrutiny to the instrument.

The other thing I would say about the tone is just how lively it is. You kind of invent your own language sometimes to talk about pianos, but this bass is definitely very active and lively. The piano feels like it almost wants to play itself once you get the bass going so you’re not constantly having to work hard to get the bass projecting. The powerful bass is also super clear and reminds me of a really good Steinway Model B 7 footer.

The treble is very delicate and not as pronounced as something like the B212 or even the Concert 8 upright piano to my ear, but not to say that it’s unbalanced. It really is just a beautiful curve from the bottom to the top of this instrument, resulting in a highly lyrical voice.

Conclusions:

I hope you’ve enjoyed the summary of this beautiful C. Bechstein A192. This is a 6-foot instrument with convenient dimensions capable of meeting and exceeding the demanding requirements of music conservatories,  high-end recording studios, music conservatories, and pianists of all levels – both professional musicians and non-professionals who appreciate the finest in craftsmanship.