W. Hoffmann P206 and Bechstein new Record system (EDIT: pic visible)

I travelled to Central Europe last June with my wife and our daughter. The general theme was music. Since we were starting in Prague, I saw the possibility of visiting the Bechstein Europe factory in Hradek Kralové, a mere 100 km from the Czech capital. We owned a Hoffmann T128 upright and it seemed cool to see where and how it was made! Unfortunately, an open door event had just been held before our arrival. I tried my luck at asking for a private tour with little hope...but to my surprise we were granted one. It was a truly memorable thing: a complete tour of everything at the plant, culminating with the harmonization room where sat the flagship Hoffmann grand, the 6'9"  P206. We had ample time to play it...and boy did it feel and sound awesome! But, at the same time, it seemed like something we could never afford or be worthy of playing!

Back in Montréal, we got back to our summer occupations. However, the thought of trading our faithful T128 upright for some  small grand started to grow. We started visiting stores and playing Yamahas, Kawais and other brands. We tried many second hand, including a nice 5,9" Mason and Hamlin. It is worth mentioning that no local piano store had W. Hoffmann grands on display. Not even in Toronto. I thought maybe one of the smaller and more affordable Hoffmann grands, like the T177 or the P162 could work a little bit of that P206 magic. Finally I spotted a store in Long Island, New York that had TWO different Hoffmann grands on the floor. We travelled the 700 km to get there in the scorchingly heat wave. Long story short: for some reason, even the P188 (the 6'2 little Professional brother) fell short of our expectations...

Well, you can guess the rest: in a considerable leap of faith, we ordered a P206 from our Montréal favorite store, Piano Vertu, with the T128 as a trade-in.Since they are made by hand on firm orders only, it took  four months... and 6,300 km later, it arrived on Dec 22...the most incredible Christmas gift imaginable! Not only did it played and sound as good as our memories from Kralové, but there was an unbelievable surprise included: it was fitted with  keys and pedal sensors, transmitting MIDI by bluetooth...At first I thought it was a mix-up, and that we got the wrong piano. But no, verification made, it is now standard on all W.Hoffmann of the Tradition and Professional series and all Bechstein! What an incredible move by Bechstein. I still have trouble believing it. And with Pianoteq now running on my iPad, I have all our playing from the P206 constantly recorded in Pianoteq! The best of both worlds...The crazy thing is that I DID NOT know this before ordering! Even the store owner didn't know it!  Worth mentioning that this is not a silent system: it is called Bechstein Record (from the name of the companion iOS and iPadOS apps).

Bechstein seems to still be selling their previous ("silent") system, the Vario, as an option. We had tried it at the time of purchasing the T128 upright and had decided against it. Not only was it a very expensive option, but it seemed to be difficult to adjust, so that it would not interfere with the normal action when "silent" was activated. It included a built-in version of their Bechstein digital piano (which at 350 MB seems underpowered compared to all the major sampled pianos such as Ivory and Keyscape).

On the downside: Bechstein Record ONLY works by Bluetooth, meaning there's a significant delay on triggered MIDI. Not a problem for recording MIDI in Pianoteq and rendering offline, but certainly an issue for realtime playing of virtual instruments. Also, there are only 128 levels of Velocity transmitted, and no Release Velocity. I just submitted a request at Bechstein Service today for implementing 256 levels of Velocity, release Velocity and adding a physical (Din, at least) connector. We'll see. Sorry for the long post.  The take home message is that now one can purchase a simple T128 or P-126 W. Hoffmann and get the MIDI sensor system included. For anyone interested in getting both a (relatively) affordable acoustic piano AND use Pianoteq with it, this could be a game changer