I remember trying a Mason & Hamlin CC. Such an amazing piano, and a lot cheaper than a Steinway D🎹🎶

That's heartbreaking. I wish I hadn't read this because it just ruined my day. I hope you can find a worthy replacement soon :'-(

Thomas, I am saddened to hear of your loss and I hope you find your next Mason & Hamlin soon. I have a 1920 BB in our home on the Peninsula but we are spending much of our time in upstate NY so I don't get to play it much. It is an incredible piano. At some point we need to do a lot of work at the Menlo Park house and will need to move it out. If you haven't found you own next Mason, you would be welcome to foster my BB for a year or few. I actually found a CC2 that is the most phenomenal piano I have ever played & put that in our NY home where it brightens every day. It got me started rescuing vintage grands which has led me to several remarkable pianos including a Steinway D commissioned for a late recording pianist, an 1864 Chickering concert grand, an 1899 Blüthner, a 1904 Mehlin & Sons and a 1923 Henry F Miller concert grand. The Miller needs action work so not ready to compare yet but the Mason is the one I always go back to. It has my heart. So I know how profound your loss is. If my BB on loan would help, please contact me starting by email, lmsmolik@yahoo.com. I do not want to sell the BB, and you probably want your own going forward, but if you are enmeshed in rebuilding and have room for a 7ft (in a place that allows a safe move, ie no or few stairs) perhaps this would help. I will keep my eye out for an early M&H AA for you, contact me if any of this is of interest. Lynn

@@LS-ei7qb Thanks for your sympathy and kind offer. Last Friday we finally closed on a new home in Napa.There is room for a piano. It will find me, so im6not worried. It's been a year since the fire, and I've learned a lot about loss of things. But a piano from one's heritage is more a relative than a thing. Thanks for your kindness. Tom

Hi Thomas, found my way back to this clip and made me wonder if you had been found by your next piano? I am right now having one of my 2 trusted technicians restring my CC2. The day he took the bass strings off was nerve wracking. Despite both of my techs saying it should be done, I was worried about just exactly where the essential beauty of this magnificent beast resides and whether changing anything would lessen it. Bit the bullet and went ahead. Can tell you in a few weeks if it was the right decision. I am hoping you found the perfect piano for your path through the loss from the fire. Lynn

A well known piano restorer told me that my Model A was a "good beginner piano" and I might want to consider buying a restored Steinway. *_Um......... NO!_*

It is a new M&H model AA, with the carbon fiber action.

I bet that BB is something else!!

Funny enough the mason B was one year put right next to a steinway A at PTG and it surpassed it despite being a shorter piano.

Totally agree Joshua (and Albert below)! I also purchased a Mason & Hamlin 7'0" BB in 2015, directly from the factory in Haverhill, MA, and I love it. It was the best purchase decision I have made! Below is a link to a recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Prelude No. 16 in G, Op.32, No.5, that performed on my M&H BB in 4Q 2021: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h62mgsmLuZjMm5c.html P.S. I loved the Wessell, Nickel & Gross (WNG) carbon-fiber & composite action so much, that I had their Chief Technician also install new WNG carbon fiber hammer shanks and M&H Abel Natural Felts on my old 1980 Yamaha 6'1" C3 (seen in the background of the video), and it really improved that piano's tone and playability,

I mean Mason, WNG, and PianoDisc are all under Burgette inc. Owner of which is an RPT. Its better to keep techs and the rebuilding community happy than to spurn them. If you continue to improve the design of your instrument, you don't need to worry about competition with used instrument. Unlike some companies that insist on sticking to flawed outdated designs while threatening to sue techs for fixing them.

That is what happens when a piano company is bought by a fan of the brand and is also a piano technician.

@@zackeryhardy9504 Fo' shizzle 😀

Don't regret it. It wasn't a Mason Hamlin except by name. They went out of business in 1935 when sold to Aeolian. It was not the same piano until the Burgett's purchase the company and went back to the original plan and even used original parts to create the frame. The BB or 7' is unreal. Get one that is prior to 1935 or after 1996. Make sure to get a poly finish and not flat like a Steinway. Be very wary of their new composite action as it has incredible number of problems and is geometrically incorrect. I would suggest finding a piano with a traditional action. The only other piano I would consider is a Shigeru SK6 (7') or the SK7 (7'5") which is probably the most perfect piano. My overall favorite is the newer 5'4" B. It is amazing. It does not lack in the bass. How they got the huge bass in this small piano is a miracle.

1981. Here is a link to the listing www.alamomusic.com/mason-hamlin-model-a-grand-piano-polished-mahogany/

Beautiful piano. I would have to watch the video again to see how the quality was in 1981.

@@gregdixon3797 The 1981 was when Aeolian were in panick mode trying to get their quality back up. In 1982-3 they Hired Bruce Clark (current engineer at mason) To fix their pianos. Previously Bruce had designed pianos over at the Falconi Piano company. In other words the 1970s and 1980s were the worst pianos ever produced by Mason. What you are hearing is as bad as it gets. And I say that is a testimate to how good the Mason Design was. I mean its a good sounding piano and beats a lot of other instruments on the market. I am currently rebuilding a 1982 A and while the workmanship is sloppy, the design is still there and though some work, its potential can be unleashed. But they still will not pass what they were in the 1920s or the current ones. But the Aeolian mason rebuilds tend to be about unlocking the potential of the instrument by redoing some of the aspects which were just done in a sloppy way. Once you get it done right the instrument just sings. I have talked to Bruce about his time with Aeolian, and the stories I got were not pretty. There is a reason the Aeolian Piano Company went bankrupt and that Mason & Hamlin isn't currently a household name. In the 1920s Mason & Hamlin pianos sold for a higher price than Steinway pianos and were considered to be an uptra-premium brand while steinway due to their larger production capability was the average good piano. But the Aeolian Piano company essentially drove the piano into the ground. That full maple rim was gone. They used a layer on the inside and ouside and filled the center with poplar. Int eh 1950s (could also be the 40s) they removed the taper to the board and adopted cheaper manufacturing processes which led to a worse off piano. In the 1920s and 30s, Mason and Steinway were neck and neck and both talked about, but as Mason went down with aeolian, Steinway keeped up their marketing and didn't dive down deeply, though the 70s Steinways are also terrible. The 50s through the 80s were terrible years for the piano industry as a hole which led to a race from the bottom. You also had yamaha and Kawai comming in while the market was already diminished due to 1 major factor that no one outside of the industry talked about. In the 1960s and 1970s womens sports became popular. Previously in the 1920s piano lessons were one of the most common after school activities for little girls, and with sports opening up to women, they decided they wanted to do that instead. This mean that a massive portion of the marketshare went away and less people were investing in painos. Then of course price point became the thing to beat and what you get is what I call the race to the bottom. Now with the low end market being dominated by price the only way forward is the high end market which is why you see companies like Mason Bluthner, Fazioli, and Bechstein all making a comeback. And all of them are going for the high end market. The low end is dominated by companies like peral river, sammick, Yamaha, Kawai, and Parsons. So there is no room to compete there, but the high end market right now demands quality which has created a resurgence of quality based design. The era from the 90s through now is what I call new beginnings. The 90s up to today is all about rediscovering all of the information and knowledge we lost from the golden age of piano design, and now many companies are going beyond that.

Those pianos are known for their logevity. Usually a rebuild of those means reconditioning the action, replacing the strings and pinblock, and a fresh coat of paint. Unlike Steinway and Chickerings, Masons are known for being pulled appart and still having their crown in the sound board 100 years later. There may be some cracks that need to be reshimmed and some other work done, but if looks don't matter much to you, rebuilding the action and a new set of strings should get you another 50 years if you use wood parts. If you go for a new WNG action, you are looking at another 100 with some parts like the hammers and strings being regularly replaced every 20-50 years. That being said, how well you take care of the piano makes a large impact on longevity. A well taken care of piano with regular maintinance and tuning may last 20-30 years longer than a piano that sits in a garage. Keeping the humidity correct will ensure the board doesn't crack, and I don't even mean a damp chaser. A full room humidity solution is really the only way to go if you live in an area which large fluctuations. I mean if its dry enough where a flannel blanket will spark with static electricity, your sound board is cracking. If you are just damp from the humidity in the air, then your piano is developing a pressure ridge. So the key is to take care of it. Getting it tune dregularly is like getting your oil changed in your car. It 1 keeps the piano at tension to prevend issues associated with a piano resting at low tension, but it also gives a tech a chance to see if there are any problems with it like changing your oil can inform you if you have an issue in your engine. You take care if your piano, it will last you beyond your children's lifetime. Abuse it, and it may not even outlast your pets lifetime.

Yes, I would like to know also.

@@kevinr278 Thanks for the insight on the inner workings of the company. Do you, by any chance, know why the reviewers mentioned that the 1990-94 models are the most highly prized?

@@kevinr278 thank you so much for looking into that. I was very curious!

My 1920's era upright does but my 1946 console Mason and Hamlin does not have a tension system. They put a new type plastic key top material on post war small pianos that shrunk and curled up. We had to have new keytops put on our Mason and Hamlin console piano. Still, it is superior to most small pianos though not as powerful a sound as our upright.

No late 40s and 50s masons are ok. They just stopped innovating then, but still had the same good labor force. But the 70s are the worst. Interestingly enough the piano played at the end of the video appears to a 70s or 80s aeolian Mason which were the worst pianos of the lot. But they are still good. As much as aeolian tried, they couldn't completely kill that piano. I personally think the vx era will be the best of their pianos. Better bridge placement, plate design innovation, and WNG have made them even better than the Gertz era. Also the consoles didn't have a tension resonator

Do you have any audio recordings of you playing the sauter?

@@komoru I wish! But if you look up Ravenscroft Pianos and you check out the 7ft 220 model you’ll get an idea of how incredible it sounds. Basically, Ravenscroft took the Sauter Orpheus and made a 7ft version that literally sounds just as incredible and the 9ft 275 is the Orpheus on steroids! They actually made the Orpheus even BETTER! It’s truly mind blowing! Go check them out and you’ll get a sense of how unbelievable of a piano this is!

Totally disagree. I performed a recital on a beautifully prepared new Mason & Hamlin CC-94 and the played the very first Mason & Hamlin VX-94 9'4" Concert Grand and they are two of the finest pianos I've ever played! Perhaps the one you sampled was just not properly set up and tone regulated being rushed to the NAMM show? Listen to pianist Dejan Lazić perform some Schumann and demonstrate some of his favorite elements of the Mason & Hamlin sound with the CC-94. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/adVpltaCqdPWkYE.html

@@jasonsolomonides I’m actually super excited about the VX-94! From what I heard this is one of the finest if not THE FINEST American made piano ever made, next to the NY Steinway and it’s the modern day Chickering Piano or if you go later the Baldwin SD-10 that’s always been the cream of the crop. There was another model before the SD-10 which was the SD-6 and that’s even better apparently. I’d love to play the VX-94! When I first heard about everything about it amazed me. And what I heard about the CC-94 was that its sound was directed at the audience rather than the player. So it’s actually perfect for recording because of that. That’s why I wasn’t impressed and why I felt it lacking so much.

@@michaelaurelius8507 the vx cc-94 is an amazing instrument. I had the luxuary of being able to play that very same CC-94 every day for 6 months straight before it was shiped off for the 2021 PTG convention in Florida where it was then shipped back to the mason factory. Currently there are 2 in existance with a 3rd on the way. I have played both concert grands side by side and both pianos are fantastic. With the 2 having consistent quality it is clearly a good design. I look forward to seeing them make their way to concert halls and other institutions across the country. I got to play the Fazioli bechstein and compare them dirrectly within a few weeks to the CC and hands down the CC is just a better piano now that the VX has come out. Compared to the old CC, it s a large improvement. The old cc was a fantastic piano, but it was still based on the older CC from the gertz era. While this is considered the golden era, it still is behind where we are now. I mean its hard to believe that some companies still sell those old designs for top dollar with no intentions to update ;) The new vx had several changes. A big one was bridges were moved to be more centered on the board a new style cutoff bar and beefier plate was made for this piano which has brought it to the next level. I still have yet to find a piano to top the new vx.

That would be how the action was regulated. The wngs usually tend to be the most stable and uniform action on the market, but if one were out of regulation then that would contribute to a lack of uniformity. It also is possible you were looking for a different feel in terms of different aspects of regulation such as checking distance, amount of after-touch and drop distance. While there are guildline specs for these, they can be modified for a different feel and different manufacturers do use different principles in regulation. I have seen some people who have thought it was all about keytravel and others where its all about blow distance being the consistent spec. Regulation might be something you want to check as regulation is never perfect from the factory for a few reasons. Alternatively the store's piano tech may be regulating to a different philosophy than what you aim for. But the new masons certainly are not the same as the old. Very much a case of the owners taking what they liked about the old masons and doing what they can to improve upon the design which may or may not be to some people's liking. I have heard people both say that the new ones are worse and better than the old masons. I think its all about personal preference in what sound someone is looking for.