I served my apprenticeship in Edmonton, Alberta starting in 1979 at Shaw Piano & Organs. Baldwin was their #1 line. Cam Morin was my mentor, with 34 years as a technician. He was an ingenious fellow, and made many of the tools I still use today. He should have patented some of them.
Sales manager Roger Jolly, Don Veaugois and Rick LeBlanc helped me out a lot. They closed around 1982, then Baldwin Pianos & Organs opened in '83, I think. Helen Kondra owned that store; I was her technician, and we later married. Helen passed away July 19/2004.
I cut my teeth on Baldwins. They had a lot of great features. They almost wrecked my career, though, when I rashly bombed thru 9 tunings one day on brand-new 243's and I strained my shoulder quite badly!
It's a sad sign of the times that a builder that pre-dates Steinway no longer makes pianos in the U.S. For me, the writing was already on the wall in the late 70's, when I discovered they'd stopped notching the rear of the bridges on the uprights. Cam was livid when I pointed this out. He'd been wondering why the tone had become so tubby!

You probably should have looked elsewhere for the tubby sound. Deleting the backscale bridge notching had virtually no effect on the tone quality of the piano. At least not right away. That was the problem; someone saw this as a way to save a few pesos (the bridges were made in Juarez) and in side-by-side comparison tone tests—at least according to the reports I read (I was not there at the time)—there was no discernible difference in performance.

The backscale notches came back in the mid-1980s when I was able to demonstrate that the many complaints about string buzzing that were starting to accumulate were traceable to the lack of that backscale notch. As the pianos aged—and in some climates it didn’t take long—and the soundboards settled out the string deflection angle at the back of the bridge decreased and a very slight gap would develop between the strings and the top of the bridge. Instant buzzes! This didn’t, and hasn’t, happened in every piano but it happened in enough of them that I was able to show that the cost of warranty repairs was going to exceed the saving in production cost.

There was never any consideration given to bringing back the backscale notches just because it was good piano building practice.

ddf

Those tuning pins on a 243 are tight... all Baldwin tuning pins seem tighter than most, for some reason.

Welcome to the PW forums, by-the-way.

Rick

Steinway was founded in 1853, four years before Baldwin. And... Baldwin did not start manufacturing until 1891.

Post-war Baldwin used 41-ply pinblocks... much like the Falconwood pinblocks, drilling must be precise or you could have a problem. Rebuilders who use really dense blocks will often mic the tuning pins for this reason.

Only the grands used the 41-ply laminated granite blocks. The verticals used a variety of different types of pinblocks depending on the market segment -- i.e., their cost.

Baldwin did, of course, tend to fit all their pins tight no matter the pinblock type.

Baldwin was the piano of Liberace. Like him or not, he was a major proponent of these pianos for many years. I respect him for not falling in the rut of the so-called premier piano. (Name of the piano company withheld to protect the innocent)

And now a message from Captain Obvious - this thread was started in '08. Of course we all know that Baldwin is still manufacturing pianos in China and is now owned by Gibson. I guess you could say it is technically still Baldwin, but mostly in name only.

Let the court reporter strike my comments from the transcript!

Actually, Tandyman, your comments about Liberace hold a lot of water. Liberace wasn't the only Baldwin artist though. Dick Hyman. Leonard Bernstein,John Williams, Richard Carpenter,Phillip Glass, Dave Bruebeck, Lawrence Welk, and many others were also Baldwin professionals, and for good reason. Baldwin made a heck of a piano in the day.

Tonecrafter,

The writing was likely on the wall nearly 45 years ago when Baldwin started assembling actions in Juarez. This move, among other things, soon led to an American piano action plant closing its doors.

Mike

If they are truly done in the US you will probably see the name stamped on the front of a Chinese piano in the not too distant future, just like Ritmuller.

The Baldwins Northeast China factory in 2010 has been shut down.

That's already been going on of years. For a short time they were making USA pianos and Chinese pianos simultaniously, but they are 100% Chinese made as far as I know, with no "American" option. A real shame. Seems like the employees of Baldwin could get together and make a new American product that could still compete with Mason and Steinway.

Change "probably will see..." to "have already been seeing..."

ddf