In Kevin Bazzana's excellent bio of GG, "Wondrous Strange", on page 199 the author writes:
If shiny new Steinways could not meet these demands it is no surprise, for the piano Gould always had in mind as an ideal was a baby grand made by the Boston-based firm Chickering (once a great rival of Steinway) in 1895. This extraordinary instument, he said, "is quite unlike almost any in the world, an extremely solicitous piano with a tactile immediacy almost like a harpsichord's. It gives me a sensation of being so close to the strings and so much in control of everything". With its crisp, feather-light action, tightly focused bass sonority, and unusually dry, refined tone in the upper registers, the Chickering was useless as a concert instrument in Lizst or Rachmaninov, but for that very reason suited Gould's fingers and temperament and repertoire perfectly. It gave him, he said, "the illusion of complete premeditated control and rapport".
As Pianoteq 5 does for me