I know nothing about the piano (Steinway) side of the business except what I hear. The musical instrument side (conn selmer)is however, a different side of the story. I not only have witnessed these things I have lived them. It started when Messina brought a president in from a hardware manufacture of wheelbarrows , rakes and shovels and wanted to change the manufacturing process which had been very good and profitable over the companies entire history to a mass produced Japan style process called Kiazam or lean manufacturing. This process works well in the majority of manufacturing business to greatly increase profit and efficiency . It even works to some degree in the manufacture of low quality musical instruments. However in the top line instruments where you are dealing with profisional musicians who are a strange lot in the first place they require personality to be built into their instrument and may test 100's to find just the right one to suit them. Presidents like Messina's John stoner either know nothing about this or don't really care, in the name of corporate profit.So they weed the work force out of skilled workers, dumb down the process and cheapen the product with foreign outsourced parts. This rape of the product name eventually shows up many years after this destruction began and by then the upper management is usually gone with their pockets full of money.
From my understanding I heard similar things were happening at Steinway and your posting seems to confirm that. People like us will not be able to stop this rape of the famous name products like Steinway, Conn, Selmer, and others in the name of corporate greed which is commonplace in this nation today, but we can tell the story and alert people of the tactics used by these greedy, unethical, morally bankrupt indiviualls