The next star to appear at the 2012 NAMM show may not be a celebrated musician who is tickling the ivories – it may be the piano itself.

The Anaheim venue is getting a $235,000 hand crafted piano, which was constructed in Scottsdale, Arizona by one of the world’s few custom piano makers. The Ravenscroft Piano is one of a handful ever made by master builder Michael Spreeman of Spreeman Piano Innovations, LLC.

The 7’ 3” concert piano requires nearly 1,000 hours of labor to create. “Most high-end grand pianos are constructed in less than 300 hours in a factory environment,” says Spreeman. The piano’s various woods and parts are imported from around the world and crafted by hand in Spreeman’s Scottsdale studio. Many parts are titanium and polished stainless steel rather than less expensive metals.

For Spreeman, quality is more important than quantity when running his business.

“Most companies today are trying to see how they can build more units, how they can build them for less money, and how they can build them faster,” he said. “This type of business model has led to a rapid decline of the quality in American industry. Tell me, what are other countries currently seeking to purchase from America in order to obtain the very best quality possible? It’s sad. To a certain point, I don’t care how much it costs and I’m not really concerned with how many I build. What’s most important is that we present the very finest instruments that we can possibly create to the world. “

Spreeman decided to create his own line of instruments after spending years preparing performance instruments for artists and rebuilding high-end pianos. The idea came when jazz musician and composer Bob Ravenscroft commissioned Spreeman to redesign and rebuild a grand piano 22 years ago to specifically cater to Bob’s free jazz style. Spreeman started his new company in 2004, naming the pianos in honor of Ravenscroft based on the project he undertook for him and currently offers a 9’ and 7’3” custom models.

Ravenscroft describes the new pianos as the finest he’s ever performed on. “People who hear the Ravenscroft will hear the kind of sounds other pianos don’t produce,” he said. “They may not know the technical names for those sounds, but they will feel it in their soul.”

“Although our sound is very clean and pure, it’s also multidimensional, a hybrid, if you will,” Spreeman said. “There is a vast array of complex harmonics that can be heard, sensed, and felt. My goal is to facilitate an emotional connection between the piano, the pianist, and the music to a level that they merge and become one. It’s from this space that an artist can express their thoughts, ideas, and emotions through the instrument. We, the audience, experience the piano from an audio perspective, but the artist has to make a mechanical interface through the keys and action of the piano. We strive to make this interface as invisible as humanly possible.

“Our actions are individually CAD optimized to each piano before they are ever assembled. Then each key is weighed off to 1/100th of a gram in the computer which results in a real world tolerance of 1/10 of gram. Most factories work with a 3 gram tolerance, therefore our approach has an enormous impact on the evenness of the touch from note to note.”

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