Peral River

[Delwin D Fandrich]

----- Original Message -----
From: Tony Caught <caute@optusnet.com.au>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: July 22, 2000 12:12 AM
Subject: Re: Peral River


> Summary
> Old Pearl River pianos are not good.
> New Pearl River pianos that are made to ISO standards are good.
> New Pearl River pianos that are not made to ISO standards may be better
than
> the Old Pearl River pianos but not as good as the New Pearl River pianos
> that are made to ISO standards.
>
> What are ISO standards ?  ISO standards are construction standards that
are
> accepted by the International Standards Organization (or something like
> that) anyway they are made properly and more than likely from imported
> timbers and etc the same as Samick when they got their act together.
----------------------------------------

I don't know enough about Pearl River pianos to comment on them directly,
however...

Purchasing a product from a company conforming to ISO standards does not
mean you get a good product.  Only that you get one consistently
manufactured.  Product standards are up to the company manufacturing the
product, not ISO.

For example:  If one company specifies that the moisture content of the wood
used in their soundboard panels must be between 6% and 7% when it is ribbed
then they must have adequate and verifiable quality control procedures in
place to ensure that every soundboard panel used in one of their pianos does
indeed have a moisture content between these limits when it is ribbed.  This
sounds reasonable and the company would meet ISO standards.  But another
company using a similar process could specify a moisture content between 4%
and 12% and still meet ISO standards as long as it had quality control
procedures in place to verify this specification.  The same thing applies to
every component of the piano.  One company could specify a bridge height of
30 mm +/- 0.5 and another company could specify 30 mm +/- 2.0.  As long as
each company had adequate procedures in place to make sure that each bridge
fell within these tolerances they would each meet ISO standards.

Sadly, from a consumers point of view, ISO standards -- at least as they
exist today -- are not only meaningless, but are quite often misleading.  It
simply means that the product produced by an ISO certified company meets the
standards set by the company making the product.  It might be consistently
good or consistently bad.  That is still up to the manufacturer.

Del