I thought I'd make this post to show people how to re-enable the disabled keys in the Pianoteq trial
using Patcher in FL Studio. I hope this is not the wrong section for this.

As you know the trial disables these 8 black keys: F#1, G#1, A#1, C#5, D#5, F#5, G#5, A#5

Which in FL Studio correspond to F#3, G#3, A#3, C#7, D#7, F#7, G#7, A#7.

To make a fully playable Pianoteq, open Patcher and add 2 Pianoteq instances,
in one instance, set the tuning from "440 Hz" to "467 Hz",
this modified instance will play the disabled notes.



Add a "VFX Keyboard Splitter" before the modified instance, so that it only receives the disabled notes, set the Transpose slider to -1 semitone (Thanks to Steve Jones for reminding me), and here's how to setup the curves to only leave F#3, G#3, A#3, C#7, D#7, F#7, G#7, A#7 on:



And here's the finished thing:



Of course when you want to change a preset in Pianoteq , you have to change the preset in both instances,
and not forget to set the tuning to "467 Hz in the instance connected to "VFX Keyboard Splitter".

To save time you can save a Patcher preset matching with the Pianoteq preset,
this is also helpful when the 20 trial timer runs out, you can just quickly reload the Patcher preset and the timer is reset in 2 seconds:

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2025 at 11:29 PM

I thought about it for a while, whether or not to put out this "secret" into the public domain...
If they decide to patch it then I guess it's just one more incentive for the likes of R2R to have a go at it.

 

well actually that secret was known from 2015
look at Pianoteq 5 Extended Trial releases on sister site

 

Yes, that's why I put the "secret" in quotes, lol,
it was stowed away in an obscure little corner, I decided to let it out into the light!

I remember someone uploading a channel rack template / FL project,
I also remember a post in the Russian tracker, but FL Patcher makes life so much easier.

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2025 at 5:47 PM

Finally got it working. I have to Transpose down one semitone! Thanks! You are a genius!

I don't have any problem with the 20 minute limit, thanks to your idea of saving the Patcher preset. Now I am just going through all the Pianoteq presets I like, setting them up, and saving them as Patcher presets, brilliant!

 

Last edited: Oct 16, 2025 at 9:20 PM

Hey there this is nice, how would i go about making this in ableton? thanks in advance!

 

I think it's an easy task for Max4Live

 

Oh man, I forgot about having to transpose VFX Keyboard Splitter by 1 semitone, thank you! I'll add the note.

That's why I wanted to share this method, you can just swap Patcher presets without having to touch Pianoteq, it's awesome.

 

thank you.
1- does your sustain pedal works in patcher? my doesn`t. do know how to fix it?
2- how to add pictures of pianoteq? i have puzzle picture

 

Hey, that extended trial was a release from me and the fl project was from @Bruttospritz.
He's sadly not active here anymore but he got the job done very well back in the days.

Maybe I should take a look at a current trial again to "extend" it a little (or even more with
my current knowledge) but since the trials from Modartt are always stripped down versions,
it would'nt have much more possibilities than the trial itself has. But who knows if it might
be possible to activate those silenced keys + extend the trial time.

But first I have to reinstall my OS. Last windows updates broke (again) my main system into an unusable state
and now I'm thinking of finally switching to linux while preparing a higly modified Win11 installation for a separate
offline machine where I continue doing stuff like that.
The only way for me writing here is now, to run a virtual machine on my broken OS because somehow that
doesn't crash liek everything else on windows.

 

@r4e I figured that it was never fully cracked past v6 because nobody ever supplied it, and crackers didn't want to waste time with the trial.
How difficult is it tampering with the trial binaries? Are they packed with any stubborn protector?

Not sure why I'm staying with Windows 11 either, despite blocking the updates, it somehow managed to update itself out of the blue,
I've had my GPU driver corrupted, random blue screens, it's just a nightmare.

Anyways, would love to see you have a go at it, if only to disable the 20 minute timer, good luck with sorting out your machine!

 

do you know how to make a pedal work with patcher?

i`m not a programmer and dont want to give advices or something like that. but mb protection is the same in 6th and new versions. so you can compare whats the diffrence in versions. mb they just updated software but not protection

upd: made pedal work in patcher

 

Last edited: Oct 18, 2025 at 12:25 PM

In cubase, make two tracks, one with pianoteq and another with a MIDI TRANSFORMER into the track with Pianoteq at 467 hz with-1 semitones transpose.

 

For FL Studio users, in case you don't already know, you can put Patcher instances inside another Patcher, so you can add two, three or more instances of Patcher, open a Pianoteq 9 preset on each, for even bigger sounds!

 

Here are some Patcher presets for Pianoteq 9 - install the trial version from the Pianoteq website, and put these .fst files in
Documents/Image-Line/FL Studio/Presets/Plugin presets/Generators/Patcher

https://filebin.net/bklaelmmosc2k42f
The files expire on 24th October 2025.

 

Someone provided me with a full retail "pro" installer for an 8.x version but somehow I can't find it anymore on my drives.
There could be a possibility to find it again and I'd love to pass it to someone from R2R as they'd know how to crack it quickly
for sure but I'm also not in contact with any of them... or I don't know that I am, lol

 

If you do find it, I think you can pass it to "funtime", I saw someone in the "Uhe Uhbik" R2R release comments wanting to supply them with installers, he told him to PM him.

It would've supplied already if it wasn't so damn pricey, the complete version is almost a $1000.

 

Anyone know if its possible to do this in logic? Or is it only possible to do this with fl studio?

 

I have never used Logic, but I expect it is possible, either using built in modifier thingies (I don't know what you call them) or by using a third party VST to remap the keys for the second instance of Pianoteq. That's why I uploaded some .fst presets for Patcher so that fellow FL Studio users can just load any one of them into Patcher, without having to set things up manually.