Baldwins was Re: Pin Torque survey - results are in!

[Ron Nossaman]

>you guys are wimps!!  When I worked for Baldwin  in the factory at Conway for 
>12  years, the acceptable torque on a pin was between 180 and 230 lbs. , 
>otherwise  it was replaced with a  bigger  pin !!!!!!   I guess that explains 
>why I   have had 2 cervical fusions and 2 degenrated discs in the lumbar .
>What do   you guys think of the 6000?   You know they are made in Greenwood ??
>Shelley Wilson


I'm not sure which one that is, but I have some comments on the one Del
designed the back for.

Most of the comments are good. Nice scale, good soundboard design. The low
tenor has strings snaking  back and forth around tuning pins on the way to
the pressure bar. Because of all the added friction, it's very difficult to
tell where the string is going to end up after you stop trying to tune it.
I typically check and correct these three or four times during the course
of a tuning. This isn't a design problem, but a manufacturing one. Looking
at the pin groupings, there is a high row, unison groups of three,
interleaved with a low row. The low row has the unison groups spaced off
center to the left, and they seem to be angled left of vertical at the top
as well (the hole pattern, not the pins). There is room there for that low
unison group to be centered so all the strings clear, and I don't doubt
that was the intent, and the way it was designed in the first place. It
looks to me like someone screwed up the CNC programming and never bothered
to go back and correct it. Surely it couldn't be that difficult, and
correcting it once would prevent thousands more pianos from going out with
the same problem. I know they've gotten complaints on this one, because
I've complained about it. 

Now if they would put in softer hammers and get control of the assembly
process regarding bearing, it could come a lot closer to it's design potential.

For a company that says they are continually working on improvements and
refinements, no one seems interested in correcting the mistakes. This is a
real shame, and I don't understand the reasoning behind it. For the good
innovative engineering that has gone into the design of their product line,
they could be making a world class product if they had a management
structure that knew anything  at all about pianos and cared. They could
actually have techs recommending their pianos instead of dreading service
calls. Why do they so relentlessly go so far out of their way to make the
pianos the least they can be? I could like Baldwins fairly easily if they
would just fix a few things.


Ron N