Just as well pick on Rob's list here as anything and see what we're up against. > I find them rather nasal in tone and ill designed. Nearly everything out there will sound just like this with hard enough hammers. The Hamiltons can sound a lot better with a decent set of beaters. They just never get them. > Even beyond the >"corfam" days, (or however you spell it), I have seldom found one of these >actions that was aligned with everything properly. This compounded with those >cheep Mexican made parts with their crazed wide grain, and glue joints that >cause hammers to loosen randomly after only a few years of service. Yep, and that's sloppy manufacturing rather than design. > All the >newer ones I have serviced seem to have tuning pins so tight they feel like >they are set in epoxy. You mean to imply they're not? Could have fooled me. That one is a bona fide design fault. I don't recall hearing anyone on the planet that wasn't in Baldwin's direct employ defend these stratified headstones. >And can you think of any other modern school that >requires so much effort just to remove the key cover? What, four screws? Why do you need the key cover off anyway? Keys can be pulled out under it without having to remove it at all. >And then there's those >cheep screws that round out after just a few times of disassembly. I don't recall this being a big problem in Baldwins. Kimballs, yes, because they were spun in with impact tools (I swear), and the slots reamed by the bouncing bit until nothing short of exposives would remove them. May be mercifully selective memory. > And those >stupid things they cast into the plate that the action screws into just so that >they can save three bucks on action bolts, the result being that there is no >way to adjust the action's horizontal position. Which needs to me done how often? Maybe they did it that way to discourage techs from thinking those bolts are threaded to allow field adjustment. >Of course it would be futile >anyway seeing how the screws never want to come out voluntarily. That's because they're bolts. That's also why they have a hex head. You neglected to mention the difficulty of getting the bolts back in once you've had them out because the ball bolts the action sits on were cranked up tight after the top bracket bolts were installed originally. Now that's annoying, even for those who don't miss horizontal adjustability. > Then there's >the ribs that don't miter into the case. How many of those have separated? >(techs in the mid west know what I'm talking about). In my midwest, maybe three ribs. I don't recall seeing any at all in the Wurlitzers floating ribs. > It doesn't seem all that >uncommon either that the bridge caps separate. I've lost track of how many of >those damn things I've had to destring and reglue. So I hear, I just haven't seen it happen here. > Jeeze, and what of those >older ones that open up like a Chevy Nova with a prop stick? Only Baldwin >could come up with that idea. Now there's nothing wrong with that lid prop. It works just fine except when some clown that shouldn't be in there in the first place closes the lid with the prop half out and takes out $150 worth of action parts. I've seen this twice, roughly one fourth the number of destroyed grand lid props and case rims resulting from propping the lid on the long stick in the short stick's socket, and moving the piano across the room. But only EVERYBODY uses that system. >Okay, that's my view. If you love them then go and hug one. When the >university asked me to pick some old pianos out of storage to use toward trade >for a new 'D' we were buying I gave them all of the Hamiltons we had, good >riddance to them. A new soundboard, ribset, string scale and bridges could turn that D into a pretty nice piano. >From this list, it seems to me that the biggest problem is one of distribution. Baldwin has been concentrating all their glue in the pinblocks and hammer felt, and starving the rest of the joints. Ron N
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