Pendle has released Ships Piano, a new set of samples of a ships piano.

Pendle writes:

Here’s another small, slightly portable and largely neglected keyboard instrument. Designed by JB Cramer and Sons of London in the late 1800’s, the ships piano (or yacht piano) was built especially for the cramped confines of Victorian pleasure boats. The perfect thing for a little sea bound entertainment in the good old pre-ipod days of the empire.

A ships piano is basically a tiny rudimentary upright piano with a five octave keyboard that folds upwards to save space. It has no bottom half and sits either on a low table or a stand with a small leather and chain contraption dangling from its bottom that loops around the foot for the sustain pedal.

Because of its small frame size it struggles with low notes so the bass strings are very wide gauge and particularly flabby, resulting in a strange almost atonal metallic sound in the lower reaches.

The Ships Piano sample set contains 155mb of 16bit samples, featuring meticulously sampled white notes (binaurally) with 4 or 5 velocity layers.

Ships Piano is available for £15 GBP as Kontakt 2/3, EXS, Reason Combinator and Soundfont formats.

Visit Pendle’s website for more information and sound demos.