Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Bye,Bye Baldwin

Pathetic, and sad, as someone mentioned, (I don't understand how to quote...), that we cannot support a quality American product, even in the relatively small numbers needed to keep it in business. Surely there are enough people of means that they could pay the fare for an American-made Baldwin!? Gibson may be the horse's arse when it comes to managing their subsideries, I know they ruined the Oberheim franchise, but the main problem is the public's collective willingness to support the People's Republic of China, in our never ending search for "good deals", instead of supporting our own businesses. I don't care how good the quality has become with these communist-made instruments, I'd rather buy a solid used American-made Japanese-made or EU-made model than a new PRC piano! Don't people see what's going on, with China ascending and America waning as an economic power? Don't think that a military reversal isn't far behind, and then we can all choke on our Chinese pianos as the PRC pushes us into the dustbin of history. Sometimes a "good deal" is not so good when one considers the bigger picture.

Please, do the right thing and do not purchase Chinese goods,(including pianos....)! There are plenty of economically healthier alternatives; Japanese, German, and even a few American makes, like the Charles Walter.

Baldwin had a long history of being mis-managed, especially at the factory and service level. Even with the Gibson company at the helm now, it appears that this legacy will continue.

According to the recent PTG Journal:

"...Baldwin laid off 34 employees in February 2008 in a decision to concentrate solely on manufacturing the company's line of custom-made pianos."

Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, Charles Walter.

When did Astin-Weight go out of production?


Steve Marcus
Baldwin District Sales Manager--New England and upstate New York (1985-1991)
Baldwin Chicago Retail Division Manager (1991-1994)

I purchased a Baldwin Model M 5'2" grand about a year ago. It was about 1 - 2 years old when I got it. I have been very pleased. My piano teacher, who has a Yamaha baby grand, and my tuner, who was a fabulous concert pianist until he got tired of the constant travel have both indicated that they think the sound from my piano is excellent.

Good question Steve,

Have you visited their web site lately?
http://www.astin-weight.com/

Kinda hard to tell what they are up to.
And not looking particularly American.

Hard to believe that Baldwin shut their doors! I remember talking with the Steinway folks at the Dec 11 tour and one of the techs on the tour mentioned he and his daughter wanted to visit the Baldwin factory before it closed its doors forever.

A friend of mine who lives in West Palm Beach was very fond of Baldwin Grand pianos (she owned a 6'3" grand piano). Wonder what she is thinking now that the last Baldwin factory has closed.

Mark

If it's going to be in a home, as opposed to a venue, certainly at least in my house, a natural wood finish will match more decors and IMHO be much prettier than black.

The economics around Baldwin, USA, and China are more complicated than can be solved by consumers alone. There is the cheap and pegged exchange rate, cheap Chinese labor, stagnant US wages, diminishing US middle class (who do you think buys pianos?)... It's not realistic to just ask buyers to all buy-American and take a hit for the team (vs. shopping Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.) while other forces encourage the Chinese industry and discourage American businesses.

I liked a used L very much and almost bought it but I came a few hours too late on my second visit. I tried a new L1 and it was very nice but pricey. Chinese pianos are big enough a luxury for families in which the adults do not play... let alone American pianos.

Very sad about Baldwin.

Will miss the SD10.

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.