Steinway Fibonacci Grand Piano When it came time to celebrate Steinway’s 600,000th piano, the company turned to furniture/interior designer Frank Pollaro who also designed the limited edition “Rhapsody in Blue” for Steinway… Read More
Renner Piano Parts Manufacturing It was a delight and privilege to sit with Clemens von Arnim and ask him about his connection to Renner. I had no idea that it was his grandfather… Read More
Hailun Piano Factory ~ A First Glimpse It’s simply overwhelming the stature and size of the Hailun Piano Company. They manufacture roughly 38,000 pianos per year. Now if you do the math, that’s just over 3,150 pianos per month in 4.2 MILLION square feet of factory space.… Read More
Estonia Piano Company Redefines Tone This month I had the wonderful pleasure of skyping Dr. Indrek Laul (CEO of Estonia Piano). Although we’ve only met twice in person, he is a pleasure to converse with and… Read More
Mapes Piano String Company – How Piano Strings are Made Stephen Mapes established the Mapes Piano String Company in 1912 and shortly thereafter in 1918 it was purchased by John Adam Schaff. Now 4 generations later and employing 125 people in a space of 200,000 square feet, Mapes produces piano wire… Read More
Interview with Norbert Abel – Abel Hammer Abel is world reknown specializing in hammer manufacturing. It was my pleasure to meet Norbert Abel last month and have him shed some light on the piano hammer making… Read More
Hailun Piano Innovation Working with a translator, he showed me different concepts in his pianos. What caught my eye was this silver looking gleam under the keys on one of their upright pianos. As seen in the picture… Read More
Mason & Hamlin Features High Tech Components When speaking earlier this year with Kirk Burgett, president of Mason & Hamlin and WNG, we touched on various aspects of their pianos that have been re-designed with ‘outside the box’ thinking. One such concept is hammer shanks… Read More
Making Bösendorfer More Austrian When queried about this, he said that areas which had been outsourced are now being made in Austria. He referred me to the man who specializes in this at production level, Simon Oss (Premium Piano Market Development Manager for both Yamaha & Bösendorfer)… Read More
Testing Pianos Like a Pro Going back just over 20 years, I was a new upstart that just got hired by the local piano store. With 2 Classical degrees behind me I felt confident I knew my way around the keyboard. Fortunately my boss at the time… Read More
