Mason & Hamlin deserve much more attention than it was granted here, both from historic and modern positioning point of view. And Ravenscroft would be worth mentioning as well, at least as rare example of new names entering the high quality American piano building industry.
Indeed I'm currently house-sitting a beautiful maticulously maintained 1923 pre Aeolian Mason & Hamlin model A. I'm so glad this top tier piano teacher uses me to house sit. But in school I virtually lived with a BB Mason & Hamilin 7ft . I love that radial tensioner it makes them the most indistructable piano in the world..
Thank you so much! We appreciate the kind words. Mason & Hamlin certainly make wonderful pianos and I do agree that, sometimes, they unfortunately go under some people's radar when piano shopping.
Stu, you and your team have worked long and hard on this deep dive into the pianos produced around the world. Keep shining your light and sharing your knowledge. The world needs more people like you.
Fascinating, very well researched video. Thank you for sharing. I just bought a Mason & Hamlin made after the rebirth of the brand and agree with others that Mason & Hamlin deserves a hard look among true piano lovers!
Thank you kindly! We're glad you enjoyed the video. Congrats on your Mason & Hamlin piano! They are wonderful pianos and a strong brand with a well-merited reputation for quality. :)
Early innovation, short-term thinking, cost/quality cutting and profit maximization, financialization, merger mania, and the hollowing out of the middle class with Reaganomics-all fascinating to me as an American and piano lover. Thanks for this illuminating (if somewhat depressing) history lesson!
Tremendously enjoyable video. I grew up on a Chickering baby grand in the 60's...What a fabulous instrument. It spoiled me for life until I got a 7'4" Yamaha grand some 25 years later! Nothing will ever take the place of sitting at a real grand piano with the top up and the sound flowing all around you.
I had a chance to tour the mason and Hamlin plant back in 2007. Great factory presentation and for the small quantity of pianos manufactured the quality was impressive. Very enjoyable piano to play with beautiful tone. Thanks for another great video.
As a youngster I learned to play on a vintage Heintzman grand, one of my teachers had a beautiful Chickering. Today I play on a Kawai grand or a Roland digital. Times change. Before the Japanese invasion, who sent over better quality pianos made of Canadian woods at a better price; there was a plethora of Canadian builders. Perhaps sometime you could do a retrospective of lost companies such as Willis, Lesage, Newcombe, Bell, Gerhard Heitzman, and so many others.
I've always had an interest in piano making and its industry, from the time I first began to play (at eleven) onwards. I have a sort of Jeckel and Hyde regard for the classic American pianos for their power and cutting edge sound (Baldwin being my favourite in that regard) and for the lustrous, rich sound of other American instruments (Knabe and Mason & Hamlin, especially) contrasted with the clarity of tone of German instruments. I own pianos currently of these streams, a Knabe and a Blüthner. If I had another floor in my house, I probably would have a large Baldwin grand piano, too! So much choice, happily so.
I certainly agree! With so many amazing pianos out there, it is difficult to choose just one or two. Every one of these gorgeous instruments offers its own nuance and personality. Thanks so much for tuning in and writing in! We sincerely appreciate it. :)
Mason & Hamlin Radial Tensioner! It's the most innovative and best engineered descendant of Chickering. Darker yet equally powerful as Steinway and amazing in it's power of sustain due to it's Radial Tensioner
This was awesome from a manufacturing standpoint but then of course there's the whole story how Steinway signed up all the top artists to conquer the concert halls of this world.
I own two Chickering Grands. One 6'4" fully American and a 5'8"" that must be Asian but it has an offset balance rail as is found in the Shiguru's, and it is strung individuality to individual hitch pins as is the Bosendofer. That said, I play the great American digital, Yamaha DGX.
No only the American had a lot of design/patent improvement and trial and errors but we also own them the standardized piano parts for the action. With the number of piano manufacturer, there was dedicated action manufacturer.
It would be interesting to see how the WWI and WWII affected piano building in Europe. Some of the factories were burned down during WWII among other setbacks.
This is definitely an interesting topic to examine and there are a lot of compelling stories related to specific piano dealers around these periods of time. Thanks for the idea!
@@MerriamPianos There is a used Bechstein from 1917 I am considering buying and read up on the company history. Apparently, Bechstein faced a lot of problems in the early 20th Century culminating with WWII when its factory was burned down and a lot of workers didn't come back from the war.
Hi there! The A=440 standard for pianos was adopted in the early part of the 1900s. With that said, in 1855-1860, A=435 would have been the closest thing to a standard even with American pianos as far as my understanding goes. Thanks and hope this helps!
@@MerriamPianos Thank you, that's very helpful. I have some research materials where a singing teacher talks of singers needing to tune the piano low as is done in Italy, and he was also someone who 'endorsed' Chickering pianos, so I am really trying to find out what he meant by 'low'.
You bring up the different materials and I am wondering why spruce is still the no one choice, or in general wood. for the whole piano. as it delays production and it's probably getting more costly. I mean there's firstly many wood types and looking at other products we see material development that we do not see a lot i piano's (awarae of the millenium 3 action, but most are still wood) Eg in boat building we see that traditional materials have been taken over by, modern solutions (polyester, aluminum, carbon fiber) to add strength and make mass production at lower prices possible. Carbon fiber boats are known to have a sound issue as this is highly resonating and using that characteristic I could totally understand a full carbon piano might work. Made from one large vacuumed piece of carbon without the need for a steel frame the production tme wood be extremely short. Maybe still with a soundboard of some type of wood. Is there anything like in development?
Hi there, Brent from Merriam Music here. Thanks for the question! There are some examples of pianos that utilize carbon fibre soundboards. An example of this is the Steingraeber Phoenix. Carbon fibre does have some resonant qualities, but I found the Phoenix pianos to have a very distinct sound that was quite different than traditional pianos with wooden soundboards. Whether it is an improvement over wood is a matter of subjectivity of course. The reason why spruce species of wood have been the primary choice for use in piano soundboards is because of their pliability, which gives them the ability to vibrate for a long time, even after the string's decay dies. Specific species of wood, such as Sitka, are chosen because of their strength to weight ratio as well as other properties that are beneficial to piano design. Wood also possesses sonic qualities that lead to a desirable result. For example, while metal amplifies both high and low pitched sounds, wood only amplifies low pitched sounds. Wood only amplifies low frequencies and actually reduces high frequencies. This leads to what most consider to be the most pleasing sonic experience.
Have you considered doing presentations of specific technical solutions employed by various makers at one time or another? Examples include the single-section mini-pinblocks found in some Chickering concert grands from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century or Mason and Hamlin's screwstringers - pianos with no pinblocks. Back in the 1980s I used to rebuild such instruments and the technical inventiveness of some makers was astounding.
We never shy away from being piano nerds here on the Merriam Music channel! I love that idea. That would be quite a fascinating deep dive to explore. I will certainly pass on the suggestion to Stu and our production team. Thanks for tuning in and thanks again for the suggestion!
The Baldwin Artist grands are really underrated. Many people consider the SF and SD 10 to be the best out of the series. The L, R, and M are also excellent pianos. Many concert pianist, recording artists, and musicians chose to play Baldwin pianos. It’s sad that they are no longer built in the U.S. to the quality standards that they were.
Baldwin built an incredible reputation for a very good reason! They are certainly excellent instruments worth investigating. At the end of the day, everything comes down to the subjective experience of the specific player and what their preferences are in terms of tone, touch, and aesthetic. :)
I was blessed to find a late 50s R226 in a Louis XV case in superb condition, a "furniture piece" only, and one owner. My technician indicated that it appeared never to have been played, or perhaps only on special occasions. The sound is simply amazing. And, as a woodworker myself, I smile, inside and out, every time I walk by that incredible case. Thanks for the terrific video series, Stu.
@@Instrumental-Covers, I raised the pedal box on my DGX a little over a full inch. I also stiffened up the supporting board with two strong triangular steel shelf brackets that go from the bottom of the pedal support board to the back of the bottom of the DGX itself. Also I have a circular non skid adhesive patch on the top of each pedal. There is still some movement in the pedal box that I would like to stiffen up in some way. The end result now is that it is much easier to fully depress the sustain pedal which electronically is excellent.
@@JoeLinux2000 I am glad to hear your pedal feels more comfortable now. I realized a few days ago the DGX-670 has a parametric equalizer with low and high shelves, rather than bell shapes. This allows me to do with the built-in EQ the same I can do in Cubase, plus the touch sensitivity and a few extra parameters give you a lot of control over the final tone. This is much better than the P125. I wonder if Yamaha will make available some of those features in the successor of the P125. By the way, I am interested in the Casio CT-S500, it has some many high quality instruments at such a cheap price.
I think what you said boils down to: loud, in-your-face, mediocre quality, built to degrade over time. Yes, that aligns pretty much with what the world has come to expect from America.
i think what is going to happen,the upright piano looks like its going to dissapear from households and be replaced by digitals.The acoustic piano i think will be restricted to professionals and students of music.
That is an interesting theory! Here in Canada, upright acoustic sales (both used and new) are quite strong. Many teachers still make the suggestion to students to consider acoustic instruments whenever possible.
@@MerriamPianos Yes, you usually do a wonderful job and I enjoy your videos very much. Which is all the more reason why the infusion of politics into this particular episode greatly disappointed me, as I am sure it did some other viewers.
Real ignorance concerning why the shift occurred from liberalism to conservatism in the 70s, both economically and politically. In Macroeconomics the period from 1964 to 1982 is known as the Great Inflation. In 1980 inflation was 14%. By the mid 80s inflation had been reduced to 3.5%. Violent crime exploded with an increase of 126% between 1960-70 and went up 64% between 1970-1980. It was only in 1991 that violent crime began to fall over the following decades. So maybe there are reasons for this shift in voting habits. And there were many other reasons why Americans bought fewer Grand Pianos in the 1980s going forward and its certainly not the reason he gave. He should stick to reviewing pianos.
Mason & Hamlin deserve much more attention than it was granted here, both from historic and modern positioning point of view. And Ravenscroft would be worth mentioning as well, at least as rare example of new names entering the high quality American piano building industry.
Indeed I'm currently house-sitting a beautiful maticulously maintained 1923 pre Aeolian Mason & Hamlin model A. I'm so glad this top tier piano teacher uses me to house sit. But in school I virtually lived with a BB Mason & Hamilin 7ft . I love that radial tensioner it makes them the most indistructable piano in the world..
Nice series. Mason and Hamlin is a truly wonderful piano. I think it deserves a lot more interest. You have a really nice way of doing a video. Thanks
Thank you so much! We appreciate the kind words. Mason & Hamlin certainly make wonderful pianos and I do agree that, sometimes, they unfortunately go under some people's radar when piano shopping.
Stu, you and your team have worked long and hard on this deep dive into the pianos produced around the world. Keep shining your light and sharing your knowledge. The world needs more people like you.
Thank you so much for your incredibly kind words! We sincerely appreciate it and are glad to hear that you have been enjoying the piano! :)
A great series for me as a piano geek to follow, nice job. I have learned a bunch and a great presentation as usual. Thanks so much, Keep
Smiling!!!
I am enjoying these educational videos. Thank you for putting these together 👏👍.
Fascinating, very well researched video. Thank you for sharing. I just bought a Mason & Hamlin made after the rebirth of the brand and agree with others that Mason & Hamlin deserves a hard look among true piano lovers!
Thank you kindly! We're glad you enjoyed the video. Congrats on your Mason & Hamlin piano! They are wonderful pianos and a strong brand with a well-merited reputation for quality. :)
This has been such a fascinating and educational series , thanks so much Stu.
Early innovation, short-term thinking, cost/quality cutting and profit maximization, financialization, merger mania, and the hollowing out of the middle class with Reaganomics-all fascinating to me as an American and piano lover. Thanks for this illuminating (if somewhat depressing) history lesson!
You're very welcome! Thank you for tuning in. We're glad you enjoyed Stu's deep dive into American piano manufacturers and their history. :)
Great content as always. I love the past history as well as the improvements made over the years.
Tremendously enjoyable video. I grew up on a Chickering baby grand in the 60's...What a fabulous instrument. It spoiled me for life until I got a 7'4" Yamaha grand some 25 years later! Nothing will ever take the place of sitting at a real grand piano with the top up and the sound flowing all around you.
I had a chance to tour the mason and Hamlin plant back in 2007. Great factory presentation and for the small quantity of pianos manufactured the quality was impressive. Very enjoyable piano to play with beautiful tone. Thanks for another great video.
That's a fantastic opportunity! And you're very welcome! Thank you for taking the time to tune in! :)
Love all your videos, they have been immensely helpful as I do research for my first acoustic piano!
Thank you! We're so glad to hear that you've found them useful as you search for your first acoustic! :)
As a youngster I learned to play on a vintage Heintzman grand, one of my teachers had a beautiful Chickering. Today I play on a Kawai grand or a Roland digital. Times change. Before the Japanese invasion, who sent over better quality pianos made of Canadian woods at a better price; there was a plethora of Canadian builders. Perhaps sometime you could do a retrospective of lost companies such as Willis, Lesage, Newcombe, Bell, Gerhard Heitzman, and so many others.
A history of piano making in Canada would be a great addition to this series.
I've always had an interest in piano making and its industry, from the time I first began to play (at eleven) onwards. I have a sort of Jeckel and Hyde regard for the classic American pianos for their power and cutting edge sound (Baldwin being my favourite in that regard) and for the lustrous, rich sound of other American instruments (Knabe and Mason & Hamlin, especially) contrasted with the clarity of tone of German instruments. I own pianos currently of these streams, a Knabe and a Blüthner. If I had another floor in my house, I probably would have a large Baldwin grand piano, too! So much choice, happily so.
I certainly agree! With so many amazing pianos out there, it is difficult to choose just one or two. Every one of these gorgeous instruments offers its own nuance and personality. Thanks so much for tuning in and writing in! We sincerely appreciate it. :)
after auditioning so many used grands in 2021 (with a US$10k budget), finally got a Walter W190 made in 2005, really great sound
Congrats on your W190 grand! We are very happy to hear that you found a piano that you connect with and that inspires you! :)
Charles Walter makes a superior instrument
Mason & Hamlin Radial Tensioner! It's the most innovative and best engineered descendant of Chickering. Darker yet equally powerful as Steinway and amazing in it's power of sustain due to it's Radial Tensioner
For sure! Thank you so much for sharing that. We really appreciate it. :)
This was awesome from a manufacturing standpoint but then of course there's the whole story how Steinway signed up all the top artists to conquer the concert halls of this world.
For sure! The marketing/endorsement strategy was very clever and effective!
I own two Chickering Grands. One 6'4" fully American and a 5'8"" that must be Asian but it has an offset balance rail as is found in the Shiguru's, and it is strung individuality to individual hitch pins as is the Bosendofer. That said, I play the great American digital, Yamaha DGX.
The DGX is made in America?🎹🎶
@@MERCEDES-BENZS600GUARD_V12 Actually I think it's assembled in Indonesia.
@@JoeLinux2000 yeah I hear that's where they make most of there digitals🎹🎶
@@JoeLinux2000🤡
No only the American had a lot of design/patent improvement and trial and errors but we also own them the standardized piano parts for the action. With the number of piano manufacturer, there was dedicated action manufacturer.
It would be interesting to see how the WWI and WWII affected piano building in Europe. Some of the factories were burned down during WWII among other setbacks.
This is definitely an interesting topic to examine and there are a lot of compelling stories related to specific piano dealers around these periods of time. Thanks for the idea!
@@MerriamPianos There is a used Bechstein from 1917 I am considering buying and read up on the company history. Apparently, Bechstein faced a lot of problems in the early 20th Century culminating with WWII when its factory was burned down and a lot of workers didn't come back from the war.
Is there any information available about tuning in the American pianos c.1855-1860? Were they tuning to A=435?
Hi there! The A=440 standard for pianos was adopted in the early part of the 1900s. With that said, in 1855-1860, A=435 would have been the closest thing to a standard even with American pianos as far as my understanding goes. Thanks and hope this helps!
@@MerriamPianos Thank you, that's very helpful. I have some research materials where a singing teacher talks of singers needing to tune the piano low as is done in Italy, and he was also someone who 'endorsed' Chickering pianos, so I am really trying to find out what he meant by 'low'.
@@MerriamPianos Thank you very much! I'm sorry I didn't see your reply for so long
You bring up the different materials and I am wondering why spruce is still the no one choice, or in general wood. for the whole piano. as it delays production and it's probably getting more costly. I mean there's firstly many wood types and looking at other products we see material development that we do not see a lot i piano's (awarae of the millenium 3 action, but most are still wood) Eg in boat building we see that traditional materials have been taken over by, modern solutions (polyester, aluminum, carbon fiber) to add strength and make mass production at lower prices possible. Carbon fiber boats are known to have a sound issue as this is highly resonating and using that characteristic I could totally understand a full carbon piano might work. Made from one large vacuumed piece of carbon without the need for a steel frame the production tme wood be extremely short. Maybe still with a soundboard of some type of wood. Is there anything like in development?
Hi there, Brent from Merriam Music here. Thanks for the question! There are some examples of pianos that utilize carbon fibre soundboards. An example of this is the Steingraeber Phoenix. Carbon fibre does have some resonant qualities, but I found the Phoenix pianos to have a very distinct sound that was quite different than traditional pianos with wooden soundboards. Whether it is an improvement over wood is a matter of subjectivity of course. The reason why spruce species of wood have been the primary choice for use in piano soundboards is because of their pliability, which gives them the ability to vibrate for a long time, even after the string's decay dies. Specific species of wood, such as Sitka, are chosen because of their strength to weight ratio as well as other properties that are beneficial to piano design. Wood also possesses sonic qualities that lead to a desirable result. For example, while metal amplifies both high and low pitched sounds, wood only amplifies low pitched sounds. Wood only amplifies low frequencies and actually reduces high frequencies. This leads to what most consider to be the most pleasing sonic experience.
Have you considered doing presentations of specific technical solutions employed by various makers at one time or another? Examples include the single-section mini-pinblocks found in some Chickering concert grands from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century or Mason and Hamlin's screwstringers - pianos with no pinblocks. Back in the 1980s I used to rebuild such instruments and the technical inventiveness of some makers was astounding.
We never shy away from being piano nerds here on the Merriam Music channel! I love that idea. That would be quite a fascinating deep dive to explore. I will certainly pass on the suggestion to Stu and our production team. Thanks for tuning in and thanks again for the suggestion!
The Baldwin Artist grands are really underrated. Many people consider the SF and SD 10 to be the best out of the series. The L, R, and M are also excellent pianos. Many concert pianist, recording artists, and musicians chose to play Baldwin pianos. It’s sad that they are no longer built in the U.S. to the quality standards that they were.
Baldwin built an incredible reputation for a very good reason! They are certainly excellent instruments worth investigating. At the end of the day, everything comes down to the subjective experience of the specific player and what their preferences are in terms of tone, touch, and aesthetic. :)
I own a Baldwin R1 and find it superior to any Steinway
I was blessed to find a late 50s R226 in a Louis XV case in superb condition, a "furniture piece" only, and one owner. My technician indicated that it appeared never to have been played, or perhaps only on special occasions. The sound is simply amazing. And, as a woodworker myself, I smile, inside and out, every time I walk by that incredible case. Thanks for the terrific video series, Stu.
Waiting for Instrumental Covers to show up.
LOL. He will definitely have a different take on things (no matter what it may be) 😄
@@mfurman Ad Hominem Fallacy😛
@@Instrumental-Covers, I raised the pedal box on my DGX a little over a full inch. I also stiffened up the supporting board with two strong triangular steel shelf brackets that go from the bottom of the pedal support board to the back of the bottom of the DGX itself. Also I have a circular non skid adhesive patch on the top of each pedal. There is still some movement in the pedal box that I would like to stiffen up in some way. The end result now is that it is much easier to fully depress the sustain pedal which electronically is excellent.
@@JoeLinux2000 I am glad to hear your pedal feels more comfortable now. I realized a few days ago the DGX-670 has a parametric equalizer with low and high shelves, rather than bell shapes. This allows me to do with the built-in EQ the same I can do in Cubase, plus the touch sensitivity and a few extra parameters give you a lot of control over the final tone. This is much better than the P125. I wonder if Yamaha will make available some of those features in the successor of the P125. By the way, I am interested in the Casio CT-S500, it has some many high quality instruments at such a cheap price.
@@Instrumental-Covers hi! It's bin a wile since we talked🎹🎶
I think what you said boils down to: loud, in-your-face, mediocre quality, built to degrade over time.
Yes, that aligns pretty much with what the world has come to expect from America.
Just like all industries in America, they have gone downhill in the last 50th years.
i think what is going to happen,the upright piano looks like its going to dissapear from households and be replaced by digitals.The acoustic piano i think will be restricted to professionals and students of music.
That is an interesting theory! Here in Canada, upright acoustic sales (both used and new) are quite strong. Many teachers still make the suggestion to students to consider acoustic instruments whenever possible.
An enjoyable video marred only by the infusion of politics.
We try to keep the conversation focused around music and pianos at all times. Thanks so much for tuning in! :)
@@MerriamPianos Yes, you usually do a wonderful job and I enjoy your videos very much. Which is all the more reason why the infusion of politics into this particular episode greatly disappointed me, as I am sure it did some other viewers.
A very accurate appraisal of economics in the US, nothing political.
He had me until his rambling political nonsense.
Yes, the video was perfect until politics got infused into it.
Real ignorance concerning why the shift occurred from liberalism to conservatism in the 70s, both economically and politically. In Macroeconomics the period from 1964 to 1982 is known as the Great Inflation. In 1980 inflation was 14%. By the mid 80s inflation had been reduced to 3.5%. Violent crime exploded with an increase of 126% between 1960-70 and went up 64% between 1970-1980. It was only in 1991 that violent crime began to fall over the following decades. So maybe there are reasons for this shift in voting habits.
And there were many other reasons why Americans bought fewer Grand Pianos in the 1980s going forward and its certainly not the reason he gave.
He should stick to reviewing pianos.