Saying hello :)

Warm welcome to you RichieBill,

it's a pleasure to read your message.

Many here would be pleased to give assistance should you call upon it. I'm certain you can find a good match within the Pianoteq range to suit your desires and requirements.

Feel welcome to ask anything of it here - bound to be someone around with a helpful word.

Cheers.

I use the Stage version for half a year now (Blüthner & Steinway D, but I play the Blüthner almost exclusively).
The piano sound is indeed amazing, compared to sampled piano's.
About the Stage version: it gives me 100% playability. There's hardly a feature I miss, compared to Standard.
The advantage of Stage is its simpler interface (even with Stage, you can tweak a lot of parameters), so it could be advisable to become familiar with Stage, before switching to Standard.
You can upgrade later on without paying more than if you've decided to go for standard right from the beginning.

For which piano to choose from: download the samples and listen to them, together with playing them. This could give you a good base to choose.

First, you can be assured that the preset sounds in Stage sound the same as the preset sounds in Standard and Pro.

Second the upgrade policy is very simple and you can upgrade from Stage to Standard for just the price difference between the two.  If you upgrade (as I did myself) it's pretty painless.  Sometimes the upgrades are sold at a good discount (maybe once a year) but I would not rely on this happening - what is on offer changes every time Modartt have a sale.

Basic effects handled in Pianoteq work the same for all versions : so reverb, compression, equalization and so on can be adjusted the same way.

The two things I would miss the most if I went back to Stage from Standard are :

* Standard lets you position microphones of different types within the virtual sound stage and to control mixing of them.  Stage has no control over this at all.  Positioning microphones (including the position of the binaural mode "virtual head") make quite a difference to the sound.

* Standard lets you load FXPs built with Pro (where all adjustments are possible, beyond what Standard offers) and all the adjustments work correctly.  Stage will load these FXPs, but will ignore any adjustments in the FXP you cannot change from within Stage itself.  That's pretty limiting, although in fairness version 6 has such good presets that there seems to be less drive to make FXPs (by users) than in previous versions.

So it is safe to buy Stage and use the presets.  You may find they are all you need in which case you get get e.g. more instruments instead of Standard.  If you feel you need more control then try Standard.  The Pro version, IMO, really needs someone with "pro ears" and knowledge to exploit.