Why not the piano as a reference for bass

The late great Oscar Peterson was gifted a Bosendorfer late in life and he used that low register a lot.  If you can find recordings by Telarc you might hear it.  Also the series "Exclusively For My Friends" originally recorded on BASF in the Black Forest has him playing on a Bosendorfer that I believe has those low notes.   There is also a great recording by Ahmad Jamal entitled "Ballades" on Harcourt of Paris that captures the full scale of the piano magnificently.  

A few years ago the local Yamaha piano dealer rented our local concert hall, The Kravits Center, in West Palm Beach, for an entire weekend to promote pianos.  A concert pianist was hired to demonstrate and compare the entire range of instruments from the mighty C9 on down.  The most impressive range to me were the upper end of the Clavinova range.  These are electronic instruments voiced to clone the sound of Yamaha C7 and C9 Concert Grands.  The keyboards are dimensioned and weighted to mimic the full sized instruments as well.  Some very accomplished pianists tried them and verified the claim.  I have perfect pitch and in terms of tonality and dynamics at least in the hall going from one to the other, the sound was indistinguishable.  That was on day one.  By day 3, the C7 was going ever so slightly out of tune which gave it away in favor of the Clavinova.  The C9 held firm.

All I can tell you is what my ears tell me.  For reference in my own listening room I have recently replaced a Yamaha C7 with a Clavinova.  I did this because to my ears the difference when the C7 is in tune was indistinguishable from the Clavinova and more importantly for me, the latter is always in tune.  I am not a pianist, however, but rather a drummer for whom the piano is a means to an end.  YRMV.

This is a most interesting discussion.  Ruminating further about past experiences is pertinent.  First a disclaimer.  I can hear the difference between any two pianos.  Let me explain.  When I have gone to the Steinway studio, something I have done in Seattle, San Francisco, and NYC in years go by, I have easily been able to distinguish the sound of not only say a B from a D, but B1 from B2 from B3, and D1 from D2 etc.  Or in another setting, upon entering a hall, without looking I have been able over the years to tell if the piano is a Mason & Hamlin (a favorite of mine) or a Baldwin etc.  With that as a back drop, in my misspent youth I tried (and failed miserably) to record pianos.  Choice of mics, mic placement, mic distance, room acoustics, all muck things up.  These factors make good piano recordings a rare and precious commodity.  But if you find a good one, and there are good ones, IMHO, there is no finer recording to judge your system than a good piano recording.  From top to bottom.  Bass included.

While I can agree that no speaker system can fully capture the sound of an acoustic piano, at least within the context of what I have heard from sound systems, Yamaha has carved out something different with their top level Clavinova instruments.  These are not trying to reproduce the sound of a piano recording in the context that is normally contemplated.  Rather they were conceived to produce (as opposed to reproduce) the sound of a piano.  I have heard the result compared to Yamaha's C7 and C9 and the result is remarkable.  How a Bosendorfer would compare I cannot say.  The standard was Yamaha, not Bosendorfer, so presumably the difference would be obvious.

Well timstella, I would never presume to tell you or anyone else what you can hear.  I can tell you that in one iteration of my life I was in fact a professional musician.  Although I joke about it:  How many musicians are there in a 15 piece band?  Answer:  14 and a drummer.  I was the drummer.  Anyway I always had, and even though with age my hearing has diminished, still am blessed with pretty good hearing.  If you have the opportunity, I encourage to try to listen to, and to play if possible, one of the new Clavinova pianos in comparison to either a C7 or a C9.  You will be astonished.  To change the subject, have you heard a demonstration of the excellent modern stringed instruments compared to the best of the traditional ones such as Stradivarius or Guarneri?  To my ears the only real miss is the viola and even they are really excellent.  Given the astronomical prices of the traditional ones it is a real breakthrough that such wonderful instruments being made again.  And now back to pianos, sorry my mind wanders, Beethoven was limited by the piano technology available during his lifetime.  It is interesting to speculate that perhaps with advances in technology perhaps a future composer will expand the possibilities of piano music yet to come. 

What synthesizer can we hear, preferably on record, that can compare and exceed the rich harmonics of a pipe organ?  Why is fast attack preferrable to slow?  Does something that is below the threshold of human hearing add to the enjoyment of the musical experience in some subliminal way?  Just wondering.

Well Tim, I already related the story of the local Yamaha dealer renting the Kravits Center here in West Palm Beach where the Clavinova was definitely on stage.  So the only part of not in your lifetime that you can cling to is the relative standing of the Kravits Center among the world's better venues.  On that score you can relax.  But there us no question that this instrument is for home use, not for world class performance.  With that said, it would not surprise me if world class performers are using them for practice.  If my local dealer is to be trusted that is a fact.  For me the over riding consideration is that mine sounds exactly like a C7 to my ears and is always in tune.