Is this something like what you mean?
No.
I'll try to explain what I mean. Stop thinking about it in terms of harmonics and acoustics.
Two pianists play the same passage. One is a first year undergrad performance student, and the other is the Head of Keyboard Studies at the Conservatoire.
The professional pianist renders the passage in a way that is both more smooth AND more colorful. The student will have minute, unintentional hard or jagged edges in the sound texture (tone), or moments when the harmonic texture is slightly threadbare, lacking in the musical richness which the composer has asked for.
The professional's tone will be seamless, and endlessly rich, without any unintentional happenings.
This has to do with subtle control of articulation, timing, and pedaling that can only be acquired through years of experience.
In passages where the composer calls for huge FFF, the seasoned professional's tone is pure liquid. The less advanced pianist sounds as though he or she has reached the limit of what the instrument can deliver, and we hear that ceiling being reached as harshness in the sound. The professional has a vast reserve of energy which he doesn't need to use. He can push the very same piano to much higher limits, without ever giving the impression that the ceiling has been reached!
In pp passages, the novice will suffer from occasional notes not speaking, and though he plays quietly, his sound fails to project clearly to the back of the hall. The seasoned professional doesn't drop notes in this manner, and her tone, even at ppp, fills the hall with beautifully balanced, whisper-quiet magic.
Don't think of tone as being something static that you can have an AMOUNT of. Think instead of the MUSICAL INTENSITY as being something you can either have much of, or very little of (or somewhere in between).
I hope that helps
