Key No. 6 - Workmanship
- Key No. 1 - Sound
- Key No. 2 - Touch
- Key No. 3 - Endorsement
- Key No. 4 - Investment
- Key No. 5 - Name
- Key No. 6 - Workmanship
- Key No. 7 - Advancements
- Key No. 8 - Your Gift
Just as no machine can properly play a piano, no machine can properly create one
A hundred years ago the Steinway factory in New York City produced approximately 2,500 pianos a year. It was exacting, measured work. Because when artisans create, by hand, an instrument composed of some 12,000 parts, it requires time as well as diligence and talent.
Today other companies, using mass manufacturing techniques, produce many times more pianos than Steinway. And these pianos satisfy their makers' objective of increased production. They cannot, however, satisfy Steinway, whose abiding goal remains the relentless pursuit of perfection.
Though Steinway uses technology where it improves the piano, its methods remain essentially unchanged. Master craftsmen select only correctly aged and perfectly grained spruce, maple, birch, mahogany and other woods. Avoiding metal to wood connections, they meticulously glue and dowel all wooden parts. So, while the rest of the world rushes to make more pianos, the Steinway factory in New York still creates about 2,500 instruments a year. Every one a handmade work of art.
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"The best products are designed not so much to meet specifications and fulfill customer requirements as they are to match or surpass customer expectations. Steinway & Sons refuses to skimp on materials, labor and effort in the construction of a musical instrument that is as close to perfection as the hand and cunning of man can make it." — Christopher Knowlton, reporter "What America Makes Best" Fortune magazine, June 1988 |