Looking for a bright, twinkly, cutting sound...

Hello there, and welcome to this forum.

The standard version of Pianoteq allows one to vary the hardness values of the felt hammers, corresponding to low-, middle- and high note-on velocities.  If this is what you desire, you can even emulate a tack piano, without having to resort to EQ changes.

Other things you can do are to vary the strike points along the pianos' strings.  These have the effect of emphasizing certain harmonics, preferentially, over other harmonics in the harmonic series.

Still other other options include varying the relative loudnesses of the individual harmonic series within given strings.  This is not the same thing as EQ, because the latter only raises or lowers the loudness (and modifies the phase angles) of sounds within a given spectral range.  By modifying the spectral content of individual strings, or groups of strings, or the whole piano, you can get this Pianoteq thing to sizzle -- again, without having to resort to EQ and its resultant audio artifacts.

Perhaps there are other factors that can be modified, but these are the first to come to mind.  Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Joe

EDIT:  Oh yes, there is another factor you can control, which will make interesting contributions to the sound:  Try REDUCING the string length from its standard 2.70m down to its lowest value.  This will introduce "inharmonicity" into the sound.  The shortest explanation of inharmonicity is that the higher registers of the piano will sound more "bell-like".  <end Edit>

Sometimes I feel the same way, but I think that one problem is that we so easely adapt to the "Sampeled sound", that differ a lot to the real pianosound. So when we hear à mugg reacher pianosound from our electric gear we think its to round and very different from the dead, often quite hard, Sampeled sound. So, I think we need to compare with "the real thing"!

Good luck!

Thanks to jcfelice88keys's suggestions and a bit of work, I finally got a sound I was hoping for...A rich, detailed piano that's less classical in nature and more rock or jazz. I also bought the standard version and have been playing almost nonstop ever since. Definitely a good sign.

It turns out that the K1 "close mic" preset has 2 other mics far to the left of the piano besides the 2 main mics. Also, none of the "close mic" presets are what I would have called "close". They're still placed pretty far from the hammers and therefore lose some of the high end of the strike. Closer to the hammers is more in keeping with a rock/jazz approach than a classical one.

My "go to" preset at the moment is a variation of the C3 close mic preset. It's in your face but still has plenty of richness. I actually like it much better than the so-called rock piano YC5.

I'll post a preset or 2 in the next couple of days for anyone else to hear. I'd love your opinions.

Thanks again...and now, back to playing...

Eagerly waiting ... ;-)