KYGO Krystal Piano for 2018 World Tour

Talbot Designs take Perspex® acrylic centre stage on Kygo World Tour

Norwegian superstar DJ Kygo will be wowing fans with his music and dramatic set design on his current world tour. Central to his stage show is a unique Perspex® acrylic piano and rack system expertly designed by ShowMachine Systems and fabricated by us, Talbot Designs.  The Talbot company mission “only limited by imagination” was truly tested as the project proved to be one of the most challenging and satisfying in our 70 years fabricating experience.

Kygo has an impressive 69 billion views of his music on SoundCloud and YouTube so it is fair to say this tour is one that many fans will follow with great interest.  When ShowMachine Systems were approached by Kygo’s production team to build the Krystal Grand piano to integrate their technical and design features, they went straight to previous collaborators Talbot Designs for assistance with the acrylic fabrication.

Working with a 4 week lead time before the world tour started in Helsinki on 29^th January, the complexity of the project meant time was against us with little scope for testing or mistakes.

The initial designs were created by Kirk Laker, Technical Director at ShowMachine Systems in AutoCAD, and passed to our design team who then got to work using Solidworks to import the engineering drawings to support the 12 hours of client consultations needed to finalise the fabrication to mirror the original designs.

The entire piano was created using 25mm thick Perspex® acrylic, aesthetically beautiful however incredibly challenging to fabricate.  The design involved engraved logos being illuminated on the piano sides, however, due to the unique fabrication requirements, the sheet had to be pre-engraved before being oven moulded. The complicated staircase design meant it was imperative that the logos were in the correct final position.  Incredibly, our team managed to achieve this within only 1mm variation.

The total weight of the piano was about 220kgs with fabrication techniques including thick sheet moulding, CNC machining, engraving, polishing and integration with a stainless steel framework.

The piano was finished and ready to ship 2 hours before its deadline when the structure was pieced together and secured onto the 120 x 120mm tapered and polished legs. The drawings, Perspex® acrylic components and stainless steel parts all matched each other perfectly which meant that everything came together for the first time with no adjustments needed.

Richard Woolff, MD of Talbot Designs commented “It was one of the most challenging, rewarding and satisfying projects that we have ever completed, which bearing in mind some of the challenges we have overcome in the 70 years we have been fabricating is saying something.  After working so closely with ShowMachine Systems, a bond developed between us all and it became less of a job and more of a mission that had to be completed.”

“Working with Richard and his team was an awesome and rewarding experience from start to finish from the moulding of the piano body to the creation of the perfectly finished legs,” said John Jenkins, MD at ShowMachine Systems.  “Through a steep and fast learning curve we worked closely with his brilliant and talented machinists to create two stunning pieces that are now on the Kygo ‘Kids In Love’ global arena tour adding a little magic to concerts for hundreds of thousands of fans all over the world.”

The tour will make stops across Europe and North America over the coming months and will be at the O2 London on the 25^th Feb 2018.

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