Family Piano
A multi-generational Welmar from 1976 sampled with a pair of Sontronics STC-1 Microphones.
ByStephen Tallamy
The story
Welmar pianos are often described as a “fine English piano” and were manufactured in the UK until the early 2000s. Having previously distributed German pianos, Welmar learnt a lot about how to craft pianos that stay very nicely in tune.
This particular piano is from 1976 and was bought by my grandfather for my mother. As well as playing it for pleasure, my mum used to teach piano lessons to a range of children, including one blind boy. Given lessons used to start before my dad got home, as a child I would often be sat on my mum’s lap whilst she gave lessons.
Once old enough to play, I used to practice on this piano and loved the warm tone and natural reverb from the backplate and strings. My kids and nephews now play on this piano when visiting their grandparents and I love to have a little tinker on it whenever I can.
I recorded the piano with a pair of Sontronics STC-1 Microphones – you can see some of my early experiments here:
Reviews
It's also a bit top-heavy,
with the bass intentionally muted at low dynamics, making it difficult to mesh with the treble and support deep, emotional performances.
A Piano with Character
A terrific sample here, I love especially hearing the imperfections of the keys which give it the realism I had been looking for.
Warm and Wonderful!
This is an oldie but goody from PB! This piano is lovely, warm, well recorded, and very playable. It definitely ranks as one of my favorites on the piano book site. The zones are generally well matched, although A1 to B1 is a bit rough. The tuning is imperfect, but imperfect in a very realistic way. F5 does stand out a bit because it's farther out of tune than most of the other notes, but it's not one you'll find yourself playing particularly often, so it's not such a big deal. There's some noise in the main recording which isn't too bad, but there's a lot of noise in the release triggers, so I ended up turning those all the way down. This piano isn't particularly responsive dynamically, but it's responsive enough to make it really playable, and really useable for productions. This library is really well done overall, and it's worth downloading!