General Discussion

Most instruments are made for schools and school-age students. These have almost entirely moved to China long ago. But professional-level instruments have largely remained here. And that is still largely true, but the professionals are mostly buying from more boutique manufacturers, not from Steinway. Steinway now owns several of the big brands that were big in the WWII era: Conn, Selmer, King, Bach, LeBlanc, Ludwig, and have done virtually no innovation for decades. Just milking a cash cow, and the cow doesn't have much left to give.

I think the only real exception to this rule is Yamaha, which remains the biggest instrument maker, but even Yamaha has moved student lines to China.

Meanwhile, Chinese instrument makers are moving up the quality scale quite quickly. There is a company based in England walled Wessex -- a good English-sounding name. They started by importing the cheapest brass instrument they could get from China. Their claim to fame was that they would make repairs if the Chinese quality was shoddy. They would lap valves, redo solder joints, or whatever before selling to their customers. Over time, their partner in China became pretty good at producing student instruments that didn't need rework by Wessex. The Chinese company literally opened an upper story in their building where they moved the most experienced craftspeople. Wessex started developing professional-grade instruments coming from the upper floor. And now, after about 20 years, Wessex is a well-respected brand, even among professionals, especially for their tubas. The tuba market became open when Hirsbrunner closed down. That had been one of the most popular professional brands.

Bottom line, this Cleveland development is the result of 40 years of bad manufacturing policy in the USA. It seems the only thing we value is people who can flip paper and turn things into empty companies with a trillion dollar market cap and a pile of crypto. We need to tax those paper-pusher MFers out of existence and get back to celebrating people who work for a living, people who invent useful things, people who help people, and so on. Our national priorities are completely fucked up and we should not act like we can fix it with a nip here and a tuck there.

We need a revolution. Not a penny to the DNC. All of my donations are to candidates who understand that we have to think in bold, revolutionary terms.