8/17/2023 0 Comments Steinway sample managerNext, a worker makes initial adjustments to the strings’ tension, a process known as “chipping.” Then, using a gentle flame, the “grand finisher” burns thin layers of felt from the hammerheads to make sure they are properly aligned with the strings. Another employee fits the harp a craftsman uses a chisel to score the soundboard to accommodate the strings the harp and soundboard are lowered into the case the stringer hand-threads the strings through hundreds of pins. The harp, which weighs three hundred and forty pounds, must sustain the forty thousand pounds of tension necessary to keep the strings in tune. Later, the rim goes to a case maker, who assembles the wooden skeleton that will support the piano’s “harp,” the cast-iron plate through which the strings are run. The rim stays in position for twenty-four hours, and then it moves to a climate-controlled warehouse-the conditioning room-where it spends the next two months. Each Steinway requires several kinds of lumber, writes Miles Chapin, a great-great grandson of the founder Henry Steinway, in his book “88 Keys: The Making of a Steinway Piano”: birch for the hammers, sugar maple for the rim, and Sitka spruce for the soundboard, among other varieties.Īt Steinway’s Long Island City factory, the film shows a team of six bending the rim-a twenty-two-foot plank formed from eighteen thin layers of maple-around a mold to form that familiar piano shape: a deep U with a hump on one side, to house the highest octaves in the keyboard. In an early scene, a wood technologist from Steinway travels to a lumberyard in Sitka, Alaska, where he examines the stock with the care of a gourmet chef choosing ingredients. The 2007 film “Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037,” produced and directed by Ben Niles, documents the manufacture of a single Steinway grand piano over almost a year. To understand why the piano community cares so deeply about the way Steinways are manufactured, it helps to understand the process-a remarkable example of handcraftsmanship in an age of mass production. Fans complained about a decline in quality while some Steinway aficionados think manufacturing improved under subsequent owners-Steinway changed hands again in 19, eventually going public in 1996-others believe the instruments never fully recovered. CBS demanded more productivity from Steinway and made changes on the factory floor to that end, despite resistance from workers and management. Others worry that Paulson will tinker with the manufacturing process in an attempt to reduce costs.Ĭoncerned Steinway devotees point to the period following Steinway’s sale to CBS in 1972 as an example of how things could go wrong. Some are afraid that Paulson will relocate manufacturing operations so it can sell the valuable Long Island City property on which the Steinway factory is located, and that the quality of the instrument will suffer as new workers learn skills that Steinway’s craftspeople have honed over decades. “People are a little more concerned with this particular purchase because Paulson as a company has no connection to the music industry,” he said. Steve Cohen, a piano dealer and consultant to piano manufacturers, told me that some Steinway fans would have preferred a different buyer. It’s uncommon for a concert pianist to perform on anything other than a Steinway. Fans exchange notes on the tonal quality of particular models and years of manufacture the same way oenophiles compare vintages. Volumes have been published on the company’s history, detailing its manufacturing practices, and cataloguing every known Steinway variety. Steinway has an ardent following among musicians and collectors.
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