David W Blake:
>Could you provide a documentary reference regarding the Steinway
>Piano story. This is the first I have heard of this.
David,
The documentation in this instance is a personal one. I bought a
Steinway for my work several years ago and had a heck of a time finding a
piano that my technician would assure me had no problems. In defense of
the company, they stood behind the product 100% and worked with me through
four different pianos before I got my present excellent one. However: as
I inquired through my network as to the cause of "oversize pins" in a new
piano, improper "downbearing" etc. the problem went back to the tooling
of the machines in the factory. The company, a jewel of American
craftsmanship, had been sold by the family to a corporation. The
corporation had agreed to retool the factory but didn't and then sold it
to a larger Media corporation who again didn't retool the factory who then
sold it to a group of investor/lawyers from Boston. This group has been
slowly retooling the factory. When the company was owned by the large
corporations they made some critical errors in judgment and changed parts
of the piano that were Felt to Teflon which after a while clicked. They
of course tried to fix it quietly but musicians are not quiet when it
comes to their instruments.
Let me say that an instrument maker that makes oboes, for example will
hand do everything, let it sit for years to age and then redo it. After
several years of work he will offer it to a symphony player for approval
and if it isn't satisfactory will continue to work on it. This type of
craftsmanship is not, in the contemporary business sense, productive. It
will never be productive but it is one of the definers of quality in a
civilization that they are able to support people of this caliber.
Steinway two generations ago decided to get their craftsman down on paper
and standardize the assembly to a more "business like" approach. They
also cannot be "productive" in the business sense because their quality is
expensive and cannot be easily produced in mass numbers. However they did
want to reduce costs by changing from an apprentice/experiential situation
to a book situation, like an auto manufacturer. I was told that some of
the problems in the factory had to do with the Master craftsman not
putting everything down in the book. Admittedly this is hearsay and at
present the Steinway management is working very hard to rectify the "good
business" mistakes of the past.
It's tough being "non-productive" in this age of mediocre offerings.
May we all succeed,
-- Ray Evans Harrell The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc. 200 West 70th Street, Suite 6-c New York City, New York 10023-4324 212-724-2398 mcore@soho.ios.com