Can it be true?  Cement/concrete piano cases?  And even with a veneer
look?

If it were possible, it had to be reinforced cement or concrete.  In
order to produce the needed parts you would need rather complex moulds,
which would be very expensive.  Apart from the question if it was, from
a technical point of view, [it was] already possible to produce such
parts those days.

How would you mount these concrete parts?  Surely not by using the
commonly used screws for wood.

And if concrete piano cases really did exist, how come we do not find
any information about this in the archives?  Not even in the hugest
archive of all: the Internet.

In order to make the investments profitable many concrete cases would
have to be sold.  But Lauter was, like most builders, a rather small
company, and did not build so many instruments.

One important aspect also would be that a concrete case would not improve
the sound of the instrument, to say it carefully.  After all, the case
has quite a lot of influence on the sound of a piano.  Concrete, being
massive, would either absorb the sound.

Permit me to tell you a story.  Over here, in Holland, a furniture
factory was only using massive oak.  This was their main sales
argument.  Their products were also quite huge, thus heavy.  Somehow
(about 1975) rumours were that this heaviness was caused by concrete,
which was hidden inside the wooden parts.  Despite the fact that the
factory argued that making such products only would make them by far
more expensive, and also would result in a lower quality, and despite
the fact that they invited the press several times to visit their
factory, the public did want to believe the story, and the factory
had to close its own shops, followed by the closing of the factory.

Might be the concrete piano is a look-alike story?

However, sometimes a piano can be a lot heavier as normal.  If an
instrument was to be shipped into tropical regions, some companies were
building reinforced models.  The main reinforcement was provided by
glued connections with quite many additional screws.  If the glue
would loosen due to the tropical climate, the screws still would hold
things together.  Have you ever seen a sounding board which was almost
totally held together by screws?  I did.  The piano was re-emigrated from
Indonesia.  And believe me or not: it still did sound (and rattle,
also).

Apart from the additional screws (and impregnating the felt parts of
the mechanism), they might use massive hardwood for the case instead
of veneered softwood, to attain a better resistance against all kinds
of wood-loving worms, and so on, which are very common in that climate.
This also did make the piano heavier.  Needless to say that such
instruments were very expensive.

I did find some information about the Lauter company.  They indeed seem
to have sold into tropical regions, so maybe the so-called "Cement"
Lauter is just such an instrument meant to be used in those regions,
thus being quite heavy due to the method of its construction.

Jan Kijlstra