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I had the pleasure of spending a whole day there a couple of years ago. It's an interesting place, but I have to say I was a little disappointed with their piano collection. It wasn't varied as much as I would expect from an institution with such an expansive title, the pianos generally weren't in such hot condition, and then there was the Steinway corner. They had taken what appeared to be a former road/trade show display and made a museum exhibit out of it(they also advertised Steinway as one of the museum sponsors, rather obnoxiously, IIRC). It just seemed they could have done so much more, and more effectively.

I doubt they'd be interested in a K52, unfortunately. Plus, just to pick nits. I guess the climate there wouldn't really matter, because you aren't allowed to touch the instruments.

To expand a little on what I was talking about:

To compare, they had extensive collections of instruments from many countries, and in a lot of cases, they had enough depth that they could display the history and evolution of a given culture's instruments. But, I recall there being a smattering of pianos, mostly from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, without much in the way of a timeline-type representation like you would see at a place like the Fredericksburg museum(or so I have heard). IIRC, there was nothing from the early history of pianos, but I could be remembering wrong.

Museums tend to have better control of their environment, certainly more than people do in their homes. I remember visiting the Liberace museum in Vegas a year before it shut. Similar desert climate to Arizona. I had got permission to get past the ropes to look closer at some of the glitzy pianos on display there, and most were in quite horrid condition inside them. Sound boards with big cracks, split, cracking bridges, cabinet showing cracks at joints ect...
Alot of evidence of what dry climates can do over time...even in a museum.

It was a shame they had to shut the place due to financial troubles.

Curses!!! Foiled again!...

Here, Emmery. This one's for you:

NY Times article: For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud...

I just read that article. It's making the rounds on Facebook.

It hurts...

What that article doesnt address is that digital pianos and many of the newer cheaper pacific rim accoustics will make that same "thud" sound at the dump...only 60 years sooner than the older ones did. Also, some of the older ones are salvagable and decent candidates for refurbishment/restoration. Its still worth it to take a peek inside before taking it to the dump....some people are a little hasty to condemn some of these old gems in the rough these days. I woud venture to guess that quite a few folks keep some older pianos as "furniture" pieces also...complete junk from an instrument point of view...but nicely compliments the antique rosewood dining cabinet in the corner.

Well, we throw away cars, computers, furniture all kind of things. Why not pianos?
I have too often seen techs repair pianos which should not even have been made in first place. It is great to get all the bad pianos off the market, then we can repair the good onea that are worth the repair.

Well, the old pianos are meeting this fate because of two things. First off, most of them are not worth the work needed to be put into it. The second reason has more to do with values in the younger generation of people. In the old days, when things broke, people fixed them. Now they just go shopping for a new one.

This goes for relationships between couples also....thats why the divorce rates have grown so high with the younger generations.

I think those are not good comparisons. The pianos referred to in the article mostly come from the "golden age" of piano building. They're 70-100 years old, hand-made from the best materials, built by virtual artisans. The comparisons you use are all mass-produced with built-in planned obsolescence. Therein lies a fundamental difference.

And, as Emmery said, modern pianos don't really compare in quality to what was being produced then.

I suspect that all the new pianos made in the US today compare very favorably with the average piano made 70-100 years ago.

Yeah, both of those probably do.

All three, actually.

I owned a lovely 1914 K52 for a while. I really loved that piano but there were a lot of things wrong with it.

I'd pass... try to unload it quickly. It took me 7 months to sell mine at really 100% loss.

Nah, that one is just a name, not enough substance...

Steinway, Charles Walter, Mason & Hamlin. Were you thinking of Baldwin?

No, I was thinking of the same brands. I was just taking a jab at Steinway.

Humor, man, humor!

I think the three remaining builders in the U.S. are in a different higher class of instruments from the majority of low end instruments coming from the pacific rim. BDB is correct that these instruments would fair well in comparison.

Outside of durability, there is also quality of fit to look at. I have yet to find a CNC routed bridge on any modern instrument that displays the exactness that can be achieved by a good hand carver using a chisel. Take a close look at the termination points at the bridge on a Kawai RX-2 (eg). You will see the relief cut angling down from the bridge pins vary considerably from the ideal tangent point of the string/pin interface. A decent hand carved bridge will have that clearance angle start precisely from the tangent point since the chisel edge is aligned with the predrilled hole by eye before the cut is started....visual quality control during the manufacturing process.

I am not sure why these fits can't be done better by machine since top quality CNC machines can repeat their movements to within .0002"...somewhere in the application of this technology errors are still finding their way to the finished parts.

The Shigeru Kawais which are hand notched have many more false beats in them than the machine cut RX series.

I'm not sure how small of a sample your using to make this statement but I have played on several Shigeru Kawais that have no false beats....and plenty of RX2's that do.

Perhaps some dimwit twisted a string too much or got a kink in it, didn't properly seat it on the bridge or numerous other things that can cause false beating.

Either way, the practice of bridge notching to have the clearance precisely where it should be, has not changed in manufacturing. The execution of the process however, and the end results, have.

I'm not picking on Kawai specifically, as many other manufacturers are producing the same shoddy results with poor application of automated processes and even poorer application of QC, after the fact.