There was an interesting programme on BBC radio 4 today about someone
having his Steinway rebuilt, with various interviews with London and
Hamburg Steinway staff as well as a couple of professional pianists.
It focussed on the construction of a new soundboard and the voicing
of the hammers.

Listen to it via the BBC's wonderful play-on-demand facility,
presumably for the next week until the next programme overwrites it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/rams/tue1330.ram

I particularly liked an anecdote about a free-jazz pianist faced with
a dreadful instrument with lots of dead or mis-sounding notes.  He tried
it out beforehand to learn where these notes were, then when the band
started sat absolutely still until it was his turn for a solo - which
he played solely on the bad notes, with a series of plonks and clicks!

Julian Dyer