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This was my 2nd opportunity to enjoy the M&H tour in Haverhill, MA. Special thanks to Kirk and Gary Burgett and all others at M&H who assisted in providing this exclusive opportunity to PW members and their guests.

Bruce Clark, M&H piano engineer, provided another excellent guided tour. Bruce shared with us an abundance of piano mfg knowledge providing a very detailed tour from rim bending up to the final testing; thoughout all 6 floors Bruce described in detail all the specifics necessary to produce the fine quality pianos that M&H is known for.

Cecil Ramirez, sales mgr west coast, joined in making us feel welcomed and answering any and all questions. So nice to see you once again, Cecil and to hear your rendition of, STWOM.. live!!

As always a wonderful time to gather with members. I am getting so spoiled by the multiple gatherings. As soon as one gathering is finished, I'm left wondering how soon will I have to wait for another!!

PW members in attendance and many with guests included; Frank Baxter, our fearless leader, Axtremus, Leebea, Jeffo, Lilylady, Rustyfingers, A441, JazzManToo, Chris Aher, and special appearance by a lovely young couple who traveled from MI to join us. It was a pleasure to meet you, Rachel and Brad (aka bklaty). I hope that you enjoy the rest of your time in the area and that you have a safe arrival home.

So, on with a few pictures...


Bridge notching craftsman



Lilylady (aka Roberta) w/Kirk Burgett.. possibly this could be the beginning of a fantasy piano for Lilylady!!
Rache/Brad (far left) aka bklaty joining us from MI



AAAAHHHhhhhhh! Lunchtime!!



A high polished instrument and performer; A441/Jeremy and Roberta (guest)



Some great listening vibes from our very own JazzManToo!




MA PW Gathering Piano Pile-Up ~ Members and Guests - M&H Tour 2005



I have more tour pics and will post them tomorrow evening.

Glad you could make it Terry. Did you take one of the late-opening slots that Frank mentioned just a few days ago?

Good pictures so far. I'll will be looking forward to lots more, from you and from others.

I'm assuming thats a CC you're all huddled around. Is it?

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.....still luv them tennies


Bob

yes, Bob..CC...quite a beautiful instrument... and 2 of them! I have another pic of Cecil and Jeremy/A441 doing a sort of jazz effect duet!

The pics are a bit dark but it's late and I'm too tired to adjust them.

Wished that you and some of the other members who joined us last year could have been in attendance. It was a great tour or as Kenny would say, a "magical" experience!

Terry, nice summary and nice job with the pics. I would like to extend my thanks to M & H to graciously open their doors to us. In my many years of manufacturing, I have never seen a company that conducted a factory tour like M&H. It was "top shelf". Frank, thanks for setting it up. And it was a pleasure to meet again, members that we met two weeks ago, and also some new ones, like Rachel and Brad from MI. I'll post a few photos tomorrow.
Lee

Scattered thoughts:

Very Classy Operation - from the greeting at the door, introduction of both owners, Gary and Kirk Burgett, staff, and even a gentleman who started work for them 58 years ago; to the close when Cecil Rameriz and JazzManToo jammed, and DVD's, pins and pens were distributed!

MH is located in a wonderful old brick factory building in Haverhill. Inside walls brick with high ceilings and the largest beams I think I have seen. Clean.

It takes 6 floors with many stations to create their grands. Excellent craftsmen at each station.

MH are 'hand crafted' pianos. I hope Terry posts a pic of one kneeling on top of a piano while he chiseled.

Bruce Clark designed several needed equipment pieces which help create or put together parts of the piano. All for efficiency.

100 yr old MH frames still in operation. Many layers of hard maple go into the rims. They make an inner and outer rim.

The Soundboard is thin. I really had no idea what a soundboard looked like. I was surprised at how thin it was. Eastern Spruce being used by MH after testing several other woods.

Action is made right there. MANY stations. A whole floor! More women were seen at these stations. They buy in some parts but refigure them to their specs. Regulation stations as well.

Black keys also come with black tops and brown sides. Very classy. Saw two finished pianos with these in the display room.

Ebony pianos do not have ebony veneer.

Their Uprights are not completed in the Haverhill factory, but in California. Their production will go from 26 in 2004 to hopefully 75-100 in 2005.

I disappeared to the display room towards the end. (Bad knees) It was really a good excuse to play both 9 ft grands (CC's). Both had a different tone and action. They made 'me' even sound like a pianist!!! Later, I also played the rosewood BB1 (7ft) with the brown keys. I drooled!!! Not that I have room, and besides it was sold. But it did have a wonderful sound and touch. Like 'welcome home'. This is what a grand should sound like. Rich.

We got DVD's of the factory tour. I wonder if you could order one. ???

It was a great day. Thank you Frank B for getting us together. Thank you to all at Mason and Hamlin for sharing your craft with us. It was much appreciated.

They are first class all the way!

Roberta

Yup, Mason & Hamlin has done it again.

The tour was wonderful, Bruce did a fantastic job (as always). They've made changes and improvements in the manufacturing process since we visited last year, and just continue to get better.

The results speak for themselves, as we discovered at the end of the tour when we all had the opportunity to sample the finished products.


One concert grand would have been enough, but we had the luxury of having two to choose from!

It was great fun to hear each of our members play, including those who were a bit reluctant to get up in front of everyone:-)

The entire M&H team outdid themselves as gracious (and knowledgeable) hosts.

I watched the production team members as our group descended on their work areas. Each one of them quietly stepped back to give us room, and stood to one side, smiling with obvious pride.

Lunch was perfect, plenty of good food and refreshments. And we had the opportunity to walk some of it off afterwards during the second half of our tour. Judging by my ample tummy, I should have done more walking and less eating:-)

Speaking with the Burgett's, Bruce (lead engineer), Cecil (Natl Sales Manager), and Tom Laomarsino (Exec. VP) you hear nothing but enthusiasm and pride.

Sounds like they have even more good things planned for the future (I don't want to speculate here, that's how rumors start).

I'm sorry some of our members had to drop out at the last minute, particularly those dealing with illness. Please email me if you would like to be part of next year's tour. Yes, we plan on making this a yearly event for the Piano Forums.

I didn't take many pictures, so I'm hoping the others will continue to post.
Speaking of pictures, I would prefer you use our uploader and let us host the pictures.
This prevents them from disappearing if something happens to your host, or you change hosts.

I did try to catch a picture of the gentleman hand-notching the bridges. Unfortunately you can't really see him, but you can see that he had the rapt attention of our tour group.



Many thanks to the entire Mason & Hamlin team for making us feel so welcomed, and to our members and guests for sharing it all with us.

Until next time...

Your Forums Host,

- Frank B.

WOW, what a tour! I have been on lots of factory tours and this was absolutly the best factory tour I have ever taken. I brought my Mother as my guest and what a wonderful Mothers day gift it was for her to enjoy "A Piano Day" learning how a Mason and Hamlin piano is manufacuted with #1 son. Thank you Mason and Hamlin and Frank for a wonderful day.

Sounds like a very excited/passionate group of people visiting another very fine boutique manufacture. I hope I can save up some frequent flier miles and vacation days and visit MH as well next year. Most interesting to me would actually be a visit to a high volume factory that also claims to be a handbuild process.

Looking forward to some more pictures

Charles

What a day, what a day!!!! It just gets better and better every time we go (third trip for Ed Bonacci and myself, the first being on "9/11" if you can imagine that. Kirk & Gary Burgett, you are a joy to be with----many thanks. Cecil, what can I say---a rare chance to play a duet with such a talented guy and on two fabulous Mason & Hamlin (CC) concert grands. Cecil, I hope we can do it again!! Many thanks! Thanks so much Frank for setting this up and for the chance to see some of our wonderful PW members and also to meet some new folks.Can't wait to see some more pics. Jeremy Gloo (A441)

Thanks Terrytunes for the kind words. Great to see you and Steve again.
Axtremus you were just great as always. Always special.
Thanks to Paul Monachino for giving me some of his M&H history that he has compiled. Paul was at Aeolian in East Rochester when we were a Mason & Hamlin dealer so we knew many of the same people that were there during that period.

Many thanks too to Bruce Clark. His energy and enthusiasm spills over and makes you wonder why anyone would buy anything but a Mason & Hamlin piano.

What a thrilling day. Even when it was over my head, I was delighted to be among people who so obviously care about what they do.

My thanks as well to Frank, the Burgetts, Cecil and the management and workers at the plant who made us feel so welcome.

I was again inspired by the talent of forum members making the showroom pianos sing and thunder, including Cecil, Axtremus, Lilylady, Terrytunes, Frank, JazzManToo, A441, and even non-player Brian! I also enjoyed surreptitiously listening to the rest of you play during the free-for-all that followed.

I took way too many pictures, but here are some to share. My apologies if I got some of the names wrong. Please do correct me, and I'll edit accordingly.

After navigating stairs or the freight elevator big enough for two concert grands to the 6th floor, we began with introductions.

Here's Cecil, with Frank and Stevetunes:


Frank welcomes us and thanks our hosts:


Leebea snaps a picture while plant manager Jamie introduces himself. Owner Kirk Burgett and piano engineer and tour guide extraordinaire Bruce Clark look on.



Here's Bruce again with M&H's Quality Assurance Manager and official company historian, Paul Monachino. Paul knows more than most of us will ever forget about piano making history, to butcher a cliche. That's EVP Tom Lagomarsino on the right.


Here's Terrytunes:


And Leebea with an impressive audience of managers behind!


Lilylady brought a wonderful old M&H poster to share. (Didn't get a picture.) Picture of lovely lilylady removed upon request.

More pix on next post.

Oh, Jeremy, thanks for the reminder of Paul Monachino's name. HE is the one I mentioned in my post as the 58 yr veteran with MH. What stories he has! He told us about the beginning of his career. Had to start at the bottom. With uprights, low end job. Then work himself up to more challenging jobs. Then when they finally set him up on grands, he again, had to start on the bottom rung and work his way up. Learned every part of piano building that way. The guy knows how to make hammers. From the inside and then layering. And then installing! (I bet this was cold pressed too, but forgot to ask)

Frank...I think Terrytunes has a pic of the artisan hand chiseling the bridges. I was most impressed with him. And after we left, he jumped up on the piano (as it was) and continued, so I asked her to take his pic. Dedication!

I-Husband (I find that hard to write out)
I hope you do come. I remember numbers mentioned, like 6-7 a week. With many employees, stations and quality control. It was amazing how efficient they were, but that is what they are striving for. I remember Bruce saying something like - if we make it easier for them to do it right, they will. The quality will be there.

Roberta, one of those nervous reluctant players who just couldn't keep her fingers off the MH!

PS - And Cecil...NO, I really don't have room for a grand!!!

deleted

Here are some pictures on the plant floor:

Chris, bklaty (2), Brian, and Bruce inspect the forms:


Learning about lamination--the headsets were terrific:

Bruce explains the clamping system:


Frank and Gary Burgett share a laugh:


You think it gets hot on the forums? Try putting 25 forumites into an oven! No flame wars broke out. This is the rim drying/curing/something room. It was HOT!


This is my favorite picture. Aren't the the bklaty's photogenic with those rims?



Learning about rim structure and hocky pucks, er, I mean tension resonators. That's Jeffo in the front.



Terrytunes inspects a piano in process:


Still more...

I'm almost done:

JazzManToo tries out a CC



And then my battery died, so I didn't get perfomance pictures of everyone else.

A great day....

Wow, great pictures Terrytunes and Rustyfingers, keep them coming!

If anyone else has any pictures to post, please share them with us.
Remember to use our file uploader so we can host the pictures (so they don't dissappear on us later).

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/1/7839.html

Let me add my thanks to Frank for setting up the tour, to the Burgetts for having us, and to the employees of M&H who made us feel so welcome. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire day. They make truly wonderful instruments. Do you think we can go back next week?

Many thanks to all, especially the photographers! We can all experience vicariously your tour and see some of the factory tho we are too far away to join the tour. I'm sure this was one interesting and enjoyable day!

Ralph

Oh, I have to admit to being one of the last minute cancellations....Sorry....Life gets in the way...

But I was happy to see from the pics that my "stand ins" made it. Sounds like everyone had a great time!

For any PW's interested, this is a wonderful time! Keep checking the website for future announcements. It is well worth the effort!

Sounds like a wonderful time.
Wish I could have joined you all this year.

I'll bet that CC was heavenly.

Sorry that Beelady and Kenny could not make it. It was truly a wonderful day.
It was nice to meet your "stand-ins", Beelady.
Kenny----not one, but two tremendous CCs. What a treat!!
Jeremy

I am working on some pictures to post.

First of all, I’d like to thank Kurt & Gary Burkett, Cecil, Jamie, Paul, Tom and particularly Bruce for the excellent and very detailed view into the production of the Mason & Hamlin pianos. I would also like to than Frank for arranging this tour.

Some observations:

First, the pianos; the two new CC models that we were shone were as fine examples of a tier one concert grand as I’ve ever seen. The pieces Axtremus chose demonstrated the full tonal range from ppp to FFF. The tone was full and very rich across the entire range without breaking up and getting harsh at the top volume level or getting muffled in the soft passages. These are world class instruments fully capable of competing on the concert stage.

As for the tour itself, Bruce gave a most detailed and complete tour of the entire production process. He explained each step in detail and went into the whys and wherefores. For instance, he made an excellent, detailed case for using inner/outer rim production method as opposed to the single rim method used by their competition. My son, a mechanical engineering student who knew very little about pianos (at the start of the tour, anyway) gained a very valuable insight into the process design engineering and the reasons for the choices made in a real world factory production situation. The use of sophisticated CNC equipment in combination with very old fashioned craftsmanship was particularly interesting. The CNC was not there to save time or money. It was there to provide precision in the areas that the tolerances were critical. This is what CNC does best. Operations that are better done by hand, such as setting the bearing and notching the bridges, are done the old fashioned way. This minimizes the accumulation of minor tolerance errors to levels that don’t compromise the overall quality of the finished instrument. Bruce also showed us a minor innovation that makes the actions more responsive. He credited Dave Stanwood with the innovation, which is to use especially finished aluminum capstans instead of brass ones. These have less than half of the mass, thereby allowing significantly less key leading. This decreases the inertia of the key action, making it feel more responsive. The result is quite noticeable.

All in all, it is obvious to me that M&H is a first class operation. Thanks again to everyone at M&H and to Frank.

Thanks everyone for the pictures and reports. It's great and exciting to read and see. Brings back memories of my trip there for last year's tour.

Looks like you all had a great and wonderful time.

Jeremy, I saw them today and the first thing they mentioned about the tour was your beautiful piano playing!

They enjoyed the tour and I think next time I am over, there will a very large photo album full of pics!

Just a few last pic's to share...

Our group had moved on to the next section but Lilylady looked back and noticed the craftsman doing bridge notching had changed his position. I thought this photo captured the art of perfection!



Bruce displaying the rosewood/ebony key



Cecil ~ entertaining us to his delightful arrangement of Someone to Watch Over Me
(Cecil graciously posted a recording of this song in the Members Recording forum after it had been requested by a certain member!!)



Frank jamming out some good ole rock’n roll



A441/Jeremy & Cecil ~ a jazzy improv duet



M&H Team ~ PW Members

Great pics Terrytunes. Many thanks! Wonderful shot of Cecil at that rosewood beauty!

Frank... thank you for resizing!

Thanks Beelady for the kind words from your "sit-ins"!
We missed you & yours!

MH Tour participants,

I had two questions and one comment.

1st, in a lot of the pictures I see all of you wearing earphones. Are these audio tour guides ( like the kind you get in museums? ) I can only wish they are the fancy kind where you push a code and get neat information at each location. That would be something for the other companies to stretch to beat on tours!!!

I also noticed in the most recent post that continue to be many asians employed at MH. I remembered in the brochure from MH they sent us they talk about rely on a large number of bussed chinese immigrants from Boston. Is this still the case? What kind of training do they get before they are put on the factory floor, especially the bridge cutter ?

It is interesting in my business all the people would be wearing eye protection, ear protection, and hard hats in the work enviroment seen here. With all the work hazards I've seen I assumed it was the foreign safety code that allowed Bosendorfer to avoid these, but I see it was similar at the MH factory.

Thanks,

Charles

Hi IH,

We were given earphones to wear to help us hear what Bruce, who was giving us the tour, was saying when we were in noisy areas. It really helped. You can see Bruce and his mic holding the brown sided piano key.

In many places they were wearing face masks, eye gear and hard hats.
EDIT: and ear plugs!

Yes, several craftsmen are Chinese.

I asked about their training as well. EXTENSIVE was the answer!

Love the pics everyone! I am saving each one.

Roberta

I'm with Bernard in feeling nostalgic. Looks like another fantastic PW event.

IH, I had asked about the Asian workmen too, when I was there last spring. It struck me when we were watching a rim being built. There were four men laminating and bending a rim. They worked perfectly in sync and they were all Asian, and in their uniforms and uniformity, I couldn't help myself from imagining Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.




These were two pics I snapped from last years tour trying to depict this. I asked about it, and was told they were all Chinese, from the Boston area. There is a large Chinese community in Boston, and it's a very easy commute to Haverhill, so it's not as though they have to be "bussed in." Apparently this is a very good, loyal and dedicated core of local workers that M & H has found. Hope someone corrects me if this is inaccurate.

The ear phones were an ingenious innovation to allow us to comfortably spread out yet continue to hear Bruce's narration.

This is one amazing tour than anyone who loves pianos should endeavor to do at least once.

And not to sound like another peanut in the gallery, but, Scheez that Rosewood CC is to die for!!

All,

Thanks to all for the info. The last post reminds me of what one of my Bosie tour attendee shared about his visit to Steinway. Where he watched in amazement as some rather large men were in his words "wrestling a large piece of wood bending it into a rim" :rolleyes: These last pictures seem to indicate MH has solved the wrestling problem

One of my side interests at some point ( be less ignorant ) to truely understand whether the PR we get from Mason Hamlin, Steinway, and Bosie truely result in difference in durability to the rim holding soundboard crown....

Any thoughts, words of education from PW about what is really required for holding soundboard crown. Mason makes lots of noise about the thickest rims and the rim tension system, Steinway about the careful handfitting of soundboard to the rim. Or Bosie who build it out of sections ( completely different ). Ahh, I'll post this ? to the technician's forum...

The rim tension system is for real. You've probably seen some pictures somewhare of that steel "hockey puck" with the four rods attached. I don't see how anything could move with those in place and attaching in four locations 90 degrees apart to the piano rim.
It was impressive.

To see the rim tension system, see Rustyfingers photos on page 1 of this thread, second photo from the bottom.

Nice Tour. I am glad for your experience. I went on their tour last winter with my wife, and talked with everyone I could. I am trying to build my own piano, and wanted to see for myself how an american piano company does it! Very impressive. Everyone I met was friendly and accomodating.... they put up with me for 4.5 hours! And to boot, there was a Dunkin Donuts up the road! Each piano goes through a rigorous regimend of careful and detailed work. The end product is consistent and clear. If you are thinking of touring somewhere this year, I reccomend going there, buying a piano, stocking your showroom, and showing support for the enormous effort they have put into providing the world with a hand made american piano. May God bless the work at their hands!

Mark Perry

Looks like everyone had a terrific time!
My husband and I attended the M&H tour last year. What a class act company and what a superb PIANO! And now a concert size grand. WEEEEEEO!



Jeanne W

Wow, thanks to all who provided accounts and photos of the N&H factory tour. It brought back memories for me, too, having been at the last one.

I sure envy your getting to play TWO new CC's!

The M&H Tour indeed looks like one of those must attend events...