[CAUT] The demise of the American piano industry (William, Monroe) (Brent Fischer) (Euphonious Thumpe)

[Ron Nossaman]

On 8/3/2012 11:10 AM, erwinspiano wrote:

>    Brent is correct about the inherent design being sound but its the
> execution of it as a mass produced item that the details have gotten lost.

I disagree that the basic design is inherently good, and they've just 
somehow forgotten how to build a piano. The heavy rock maple rim is 
indeed a fine thing, but beech or any other similarly hard and dense 
wood would make as fine a rim. But then they cripple the treble with a 
light spruce belly rail in precisely the area where a hard dense rim 
would do the most good. Adequately bracing this rim with a good H style 
bracing rather than the structurally rather pointless "tone collector" 
which leaves the already too soft and light belly rail virtually 
unsupported by anything but a little stick that looks for all the world 
like an afterthought. Small rebuilding shops around the country have 
demonstrated repeatedly that stiffening and mass loading these 
under-engineered belly rails with extra bracing and weight makes a 
significant positive difference. A good bracing system and a heavy maple 
belly rail should, and could relatively easily be done at any time to 
the entire production line with minimal trauma to the process and much 
positive effect. Crowning and stiffening the ribs could also be done 
relatively easily with minimal disruption to established build flow, and 
would significantly narrow the now extreme range of variation from one 
piano to the next without making any more changes to the soundboard 
assembly. Eliminating the squalling front duplexes would be more 
traumatic, as it would involve casting pattern changes and an added 
process of producing and placing counter bearing bars, but those much 
invoked high level concert techs who waste so much time trying to get 
the things to quiet down could spend the time savings on trying to 
figure out how to make the low tenor of the model B sound less like a 
ruptured duck. Good luck on that one. The rear duplexes aren't 
particularly problematic, so that's one treasured patent they could keep 
for the sales staff to point to.

So these pianos are improvable at the factory level with minimal tooling 
and production flow changes, just by eliminating the really bad design 
features and leaving the good stuff. But as long as evangelizing the 
warts and pretending the problems aren't there works so well even among 
techs who ought to be able to tell the difference, much less the public, 
it'll never happen.

And no, Steinway NY is not the only one, but it does seem to claim the 
most rabid and numerous disciples/minions willing to deny all faults.

I've heard some very nice sounding Steinways, but there are plenty of 
dogs to go around too.

Ron N