CBS years at S&S was improvements

[John Musselwhite]

At 01:21 AM 05/05/02 -0400, Dale wrote:


>>     The way I heard was that although many design flaws were allowed in 
>> the action
>>dept. etc. S&S was actually kept a float by CBS as they pumped a huge 
>>amount of capital into it to keep it a float.

Had they been building a better piano at the time they may not have had 
that problem, which incidentally was repeated with Fender. Mind you, CBS 
did have to upgrade a lot of the ancient equipment so to be fair they did 
put money into the company.

>>Also I don't agree about the pianos from the cbs years as some of the 
>>best  sounding boards/sound that ever came out of the factory at least to 
>>my ear that I've witnessed. Lousy actions and damper systems but many 
>>good sounding cases.

I can't argue with that, just as I can't argue with all the good sounding 
cases they're producing now.  Some people think they all should be perfect, 
but you don't get perfection in an instrument of this kind, at least in a 
plain-case piano.  I would expect more detailing in an art-case or even 
exotic veneered piano, which is usually what I've found, but if you are 
looking for something closer to perfection in design and execution you need 
to double the price.

>>Yes ,I too get my best raw material from the company and Long live the 
>>King/ Queen so to speak and may they provide us salvageable carcasses for 
>>years to come. Like your slant. Works for me.

Thanks. I want to make it clear that I like their new pianos too though, 
and don't consider the vast majority of them to be mere "carcasses" by any 
stretch of the imagination. I've been fortunate enough to be able to 
inspect about 30 new Steinways in the last few months in various places and 
while I didn't go over them with a micrometer they all appeared to be very 
nicely built and played reasonably well for hand-made performance pianos 
left sitting on a few different sales floors rather than having been 
detailed where they'll ultimately end up.

Maybe this is an exception but for example, I look after a 1999 B that I 
think is going to be a killer piano in a couple of years. All it needed 
(and to some extent still needs) was the "customizing" in the touch and 
tone that new Steinways have always needed, plus a few years of playing for 
it to mature. By the time the owner's toddlers are in school and "mom" has 
time to practice regularly again it'll be a fine piano. By the time they go 
off to University and they've all been taking lessons on it people will be 
reminiscing about the wonderful times they had with it. By the time they 
inherit it the piano will still be ready for the next generation and the 
cycle will start again. I've seen this repeated with Steinways enough times 
in other families to know that there's something more to it that just hype.

                 John


John Musselwhite, RPT    -     Calgary, Alberta Canada
http://www.musselwhite.com  http://canadianpianopage.com/calgary
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