I had a long conversation with my old tech. A few things: he thinks at that age it'll undoubtedly need some work, and if I play often the hammers will need to be replaced at some point. He said that ever since Yamaha acquired Renner a few years back, things have changed for the worse. They claim that the hammers are "easier to voice", because most technicians don't know how to do foundational voicing to change the character of the sound and only know how to do maintenance voicing. He said they've reduced the range that hammers used to have. Also, he said now if you order hammers from Bösendorfer you don't know what you're going to get! You have to specify the kind of felt and all of these parameters and then pray that they send you what you actually want. He was training the techs at a local shop for a while and they saw all of these changes on new pianos coming in.
He said the Baldwin hammers had a beautiful sound but they didn't have much felt and had to be voiced often and they won't last. And if I got new hammers, you have to regulate everything to accommodate the different weights and it's not going to feel the same or sound the same. Twenty years ago at least you could get decent hammers but going forward he said you just don't know. He said Bo has some of the best hammers that he's worked on (the new factory ones installed a few years ago) and that I may not be able to find a piano like that again. Last time he told me he thinks these hammers should last me 30-40 years.
So... there's quite a lot of risk! And I'm not keen on the idea of having two huge pianos in my living room. He said if I'm not playing Bo and it's just sitting there I should probably still have it tuned yearly for stability.
HeartKeys Probably set your initial expectations prior to viewing/playing it though, so as to temper your expectations and not get overly gut-reaction to it being "the one" instantly. The feeling of that, only to subsequently not go through with it, can be very very (negatively) powerful feeling, of not obtaining that which we desire.
Thanks for all of your comments! My tech thinks I just like old big Baldwin grands; there was one 1950's one that was clapped out but I still liked it. I suspect I will like the touch. But enough to buy, with all of the complication that it entails? I don't like making my life unnecessarily complicated and I like how my living room is set up.
It sounds like if I buy this piano, I'm going to have two big grands for at least some time if I don't try to sell Bo. I don't know how I feel about that. That's a lot of money in a depreciating asset if it's just sitting there. My tech said it's best to keep looking, and that it's a fun hobby to go check out the dealerships anyway, and it's best if I fall for a brand new piano that has a ton of life left in it. I don't think that will happen in Portland because the two biggest dealerships have concrete floors and I just can't properly experience then pianos. If I was seriously shopping I'd probably want to fly to the East Coast, but I'm not and will only consider changing things up if the right piano just happens to cross my path.
Anyway, the lady hasn't responded to my text yet so it's still all quite hypothetical!