© Adrian MannAdrian Mann with his 5.7m-long piano in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Adrian Mann began building the 5.7 metre piano as an "obsessive" high school student in a farm shed in Timaru, a small town on the east coast of the South Island.
Now aged 28 and working full-time as a piano builder, Mann's keyboard has been played by some of New Zealand's best concert pianists, and was once installed in the Otago Museum foyer in the hope Elton John would play it when he gave a concert in Dunedin.
Weighing more than a tonne, Mann said the instrument sounded very different from normal pianos, with a deeper bass and depth resulting from its extraordinary length.
"It was a gigantic experiment. If you think of a typical concert piano, of course they sound amazing. But with this piano, there is an extra level of depth and resonance again because the piano wires are more than 20ft long," said Mann.
"You've got a huge soundboard, it moves a massive amount of air, and you've got that extra bit of grunt behind it. The keys are almost a metre long. There were huge engineering challenges to overcome. When it was first built the sound was quite raw, but it's now much more refined and tuned and well-regulated."
The Alexander piano will now remain permanently in Mann's workshop in Dunedin, where he hoped curious pianists from around the world would visit and have a play.
"A lot of people approach the piano with all sorts of different ideas. I had a pianist from London visit recently and he was quite pessimistic about the piano. He thought it was a gimmick," said Mann.
"But when he finished playing, he was quite delighted with what he could get out of it. A lot of pianists come along and the first thing they do is play the bottom notes and go 'oh my goodness'. It can be quite hard to pull some people away. I haven't had a negative reaction yet."
I'd bet that most or at least quite a high percentage of the guys on here are like that. E.g., Nedlud, Baybars, et al. (a long , long list.) That old frontier know how was still passed down to our generation, but it seems not below for sundry reasons, including our general awareness of:
1. where world was going and fear of what those kids might face;
2. The manipulative nature of government in controlling people by the threat to their children, et al.
I thank God I did not have the distractions of computers and computer games, etc. The only computer game worth letting a kid play is Window's Minesweeper.
*I had a great teacher, my Father. Also, where and when I grew up in Florida, we were cutting edge on the party scene as all came in here, but were old fashioned re dates, etc. E.g., if you couldn't fix your own car - and theirs - few girls would date you.
I grant all this reflects old fashioned notions, but I still enjoy fixing things. * One important free hint for all at end.
It's not just being mechanically inclined: it's enjoying it, as this guy obviously does.
R.C. RC