Grand Old Soul

The hardworking employees of Baldwin’s Arkansas headquarters map out the making of a Baldwin Grand in their own words

Just outside of Memphis, Tennessee, the sleepy small town of Trumann, Arkansas has served as the unlikely birthplace of the world’s finest grand pianos for more than 30 years. As headquarters for Baldwin Piano, Trumann is home to roughly 100 highly skilled piano craftsmen, each of whom arrive to the Baldwin plant at 6 a.m. every morning. Together they work to assemble ten magnificent, 1,000-lb grand pianos a week.

Thousands of meticulous steps and only the finest materials go into the complex, six-week-long process of handcrafting a single Baldwin grand, says Baldwin Master Technician Thomas Malone. “Everyy here gets specific training for the job they’re doing—it could be anything from spraying finish to loading a truck with a big, heavy grand piano, or regulating the real piano-building tasks,” Malone says. “Everyone here can do more than one job.”

For over 150 years, Baldwin’s grand pianos have graced celebrated concert halls and been the first choice of the world’s best pianists—but six years ago production on the company’s incredible line of pianos was threatened, and almost halted forever.

No one at Baldwin forgets the winter morning in 2001 when the whole workforce was ushered into the break room and asked not to clock in.

“When we went into the break room, they told us that everybody in the room had been terminated and to go home,” says Lisa Jones, Baldwin’s Keys and Action Builder, who came to make pianos for Baldwin right out of high school, and has stayed for 20 years.

Mark Covey, who’s been with Baldwin even longer—26 years—says, “We just barely had enough money to survive. It was pretty tough. Sometimes we didn’t get a paycheck, but we kept on working. I knew we’d get a paycheck sooner or later. I knew things would turn around. We were going through rough times. Everybody has them, but if you hang with it long enough it’ll get better.”

After laying off its workers, Baldwin publicly announced its bankruptcy. But in November of 2001, Gibson Guitar CEO and Chairman Henry Juszkiewicz purchased Baldwin Piano. Inspired to restore the quality of Baldwin pianos and the morale of its workers, Juszkiewicz rehired Jones and dozens of other loyal Baldwin employees and supplied them with top-quality materials, and a benefits plan that includes a family medical and dental policy and a 401K.

“When we found someone was taking over, we were like, surely they mean business, because we knew we were in debt,” says Jones. “The quality’s gotten better since Gibson bought us. Now, our quality’s got to be first.”

Second only to Baldwin’s commitment to quality is its commitment to family. Together, Baldwin employees celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, take up collections for the sick, and organize potluck lunches.

“The people that work here are really loyal,” says Jennifer Holt, Baldwin’s Director of Events and Marketing. “They’re here to stay. Some of these people, this is all they’ve done for years and years. They don’t want to do anything else. They like to do what they do—they build pianos. Honestly, we’re like a big family.”

Baldwin employees agree that the company’s revitalization, and their former financial strains, have brought them even closer together. Twenty two employees remain from the pre-Gibson Baldwin.

“Gibson’s a strong company, and it made Baldwin stronger,” says Covey. “We started getting more material, more of what we needed, more parts, and stuff to build the pianos, and it definitely helped. When Gibson bought us out, it was a blessing. It really put us at ease as far as what’s going to happen to the company, because when Gibson bought it you knew that it wasn’t going anywhere. It’s like Henry said—he’s here for the long haul, and he’s here to make pianos.”

Rim Pressing

Each week, Thomas Malone places an order for the long plies of maple and poplar that will form a piano’s inner and outer rims. Until it’s ready for use, he stores this veneer in Baldwin’s conditioning room where it is dried to a specific moisture content level. Then several piano technicians come to fetch the 20-foot long plies for rim pressing.

“It takes a number of people to handle all that lumber, and get it into the press and spread glue on it and lock the press down with specific torque on each clamp,” Malone says. “And that all has to be done quickly before the glue starts to set.”

Once the plies have been glued together, they’re fed into the rim press, where for eight hours it bears down on the inner maple rim, bonding it to the outer poplar rim.

After so much glue and humidity, the wood has expanded significantly and must be clamped together and returned to the conditioning room, where it cures for two to four weeks, depending on how big the piano will be.

Rim Assembly

After its rest in the conditioning and drying room, piano techs again remove the shell to prep it for rim assembly in whitewood.

The rim, which will come to form the body of the piano, comes out of the press oversized, and must be cut and sanded to the appropriate specs. Then arm blocks and the keybed are installed, and the rim is secured with poplar braces to maintain its structural integrity.

Then, the piano’s top edge and keybed edges are veneered, and the legs, lyre pedals, and lid are sanded and custom fit to the piano, but not yet attached.

“These parts are assigned to the piano so that they all go into finishing together, and they all come out the same color,” says Malone.

The piano lid is cut on an ultra-modern woodworking machine, and then the entire case goes through Baldwin’s scrupulous sanding process, with all of its curves being hand-sanded.

“Once it gets to the three girls in hand sanding, they’ll use real fine paper, and it’ll be almost like glass when it leaves them,” says Rooker. “It’ll be real slick, and then it’s ready to go out there and have finish put on it.”

Finishing

At this point, the shell is moved into the finishing department, where Finishing Director Jay Billiet determines whether the piano will receive a black coat of paint or a clear finish.

“If it’s going to be black, we put on five coats of primer,” says Billiet. “If it’s a clear finish, it gets stained and then gets a clear sealer, drying for about an hour between each coat.”

The coats of sealer dry overnight, and then Billiet sands the entire rim and applies the finish coats.

“If it’s a high gloss piano, it gets eight coats of gloss put on it—black for black and clear for clear. And if it’s a satin piano then it gets lacquer. We let that dry about three to four days, and then we sand the orange peel out of it and then buff it.”

To accentuate the natural grain of the stained mahogany pianos, Billiet uses an abrasive pad to hand-lighten darker streaks in the wood. “We play with the natural ribbon in the wood so that every piano is unique, and they really do have their own character,” Billiet says with a laugh.

Since Gibson acquired Baldwin, Billiet says he’s received more creative freedom, saying, “We’ve been doing a lot of new, exciting things. We’re working on a piano that’s gold and some other colors that have flakes in them—kind of like you’d see on a show car.”

Soundboard Installation

After the piano and its parts are finished, it begins the two-week process of getting strung and outfitted with its soundboard—the intricate rig that amplifies string energy to produce a Baldwin’s rich, sustaining tone.

“The soundboard’s a transducer,” Malone explains. “You hit a piano key with your hand, and then you have a vibrating string that’s got energy in it, and the energy goes through the bridge and into the soundboard. At that point, the soundboard starts vibrating, and it moves air, creating sound waves.”

Crafted of the highest quality Adirondack or eastern spruce, the soundboard is equipped with ribs, which are fitted into notches in the piano’s inner rim at a 90 degree angle. The soundboard parts are then glued together with the help of a team of people who clamp them together and insert them into a press, where the soundboard is left to dry overnight.

Next, the piano’s two hand-notched bridges are glued on. An integral part of the soundboard assembly, the bridge and ribs distribute the energy from the strings throughout the soundboard area.

The following morning, the piano is equipped with a cast iron plate, which is set very carefully so that the strings will match up with the bridge.

“Baldwin pianos are unique in that the plates are suspended over the soundboard on bolts,” says Malone. “Most plates sit on dowels, but the Baldwin plate is in a vertical position that can be set very accurately. The Baldwin process for setting plates was actually patented in 1964.”

After the plates are installed, then the piano is hand-strung with 219 pre-tuned SynchroTone strings before it’s moved into chipping.

There, Malone says, “Instead of playing a key to hit a string, you use a chip of wood and pluck them. Chipping is basically a real rough tuning so that you get all the strings up to the correct tension.”

Keys & Actions

The case, which now resembles an actual piano, but without legs or a lid, goes next to Lisa Jones, who spends an entire work day installing the ebony keys and action on a single grand piano.

“It’s a long process,” Jones says. Besides leveling and evenly lining up the piano’s 88 keys, Jones must apply the action, which is a system of highly sensitive wooden levers that transfer a player’s hand movement into a musical note.

After mounting the piano’s action, Jones carefully sands its hammers, called the “heart of the piano,” until they correspond to the piano’s specific angles. Once all the action’s parts are assembled, the piano moves into regulation, where it receives various adjustments.

The piano is then installed with dampers. “When the hammer goes up and hits the strings, the dampers can either cut the sound off or make it continue,” says Jones.

Afterwards, the piano is broken in with a machine known as “the beater,” a mechanical device that plays the piano so that each one of its 88 piano keys are stroked 10,000 times.

Afterwards, the piano is again regulated, much like a wristwatch would need to be, says Malone. The piano is also tuned and retuned several times to adjust the string tension to fit the traditional Western scale.

Upfit

Once regulation and tuning have been stabilized, the piano is fully playable, but is missing its accessories.

“All the stuff you see when the piano’s closed up—that’s what we put on,” says Mark Covey, who supervises Baldwin’s upfit department. “It’s one of the last jobs that you do. I love it because I like to just sit and cut the parts, fit ’em, and all that good stuff.”

Covey spends a great deal of time hand sanding the parts of the piano to custom fit them to the rim—including the music desk and shelf. He also installs the piano’s hardware and hinges, and the fallboard that covers the keys.

Final touch-ups and polishing are done before the piano is fully inspected and tuned for the fourth and final time. The piano is now fully formed, minus its legs, which are packed with the piano in the shipping department and marked for delivery to dealers worldwide.

From small town America to far-away locales, the magnificent pianos Baldwin employees have handcrafted together will go on to become family heirlooms and ballroom centerpieces, works of art and the backbone of many an orchestra. As Baldwin moves into the future, the company embraces the traditions—and the people—who make it legendary.

Baldwin employee of 29 years, Ricky Rooker says, “I like the kind of work I do. It’s nice to see the finished product—especially if you see somebody playing it on TV, you feel like, ‘I did that.’ It’s a great feeling.”