----- Original Message ----- From: Tony Caught <caute@optusnet.com.au> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: July 22, 2000 12:12 AM Subject: Re: Peral River > Summary > Old Pearl River pianos are not good. > New Pearl River pianos that are made to ISO standards are good. > New Pearl River pianos that are not made to ISO standards may be better than > the Old Pearl River pianos but not as good as the New Pearl River pianos > that are made to ISO standards. > > What are ISO standards ? ISO standards are construction standards that are > accepted by the International Standards Organization (or something like > that) anyway they are made properly and more than likely from imported > timbers and etc the same as Samick when they got their act together. ---------------------------------------- I don't know enough about Pearl River pianos to comment on them directly, however... Purchasing a product from a company conforming to ISO standards does not mean you get a good product. Only that you get one consistently manufactured. Product standards are up to the company manufacturing the product, not ISO. For example: If one company specifies that the moisture content of the wood used in their soundboard panels must be between 6% and 7% when it is ribbed then they must have adequate and verifiable quality control procedures in place to ensure that every soundboard panel used in one of their pianos does indeed have a moisture content between these limits when it is ribbed. This sounds reasonable and the company would meet ISO standards. But another company using a similar process could specify a moisture content between 4% and 12% and still meet ISO standards as long as it had quality control procedures in place to verify this specification. The same thing applies to every component of the piano. One company could specify a bridge height of 30 mm +/- 0.5 and another company could specify 30 mm +/- 2.0. As long as each company had adequate procedures in place to make sure that each bridge fell within these tolerances they would each meet ISO standards. Sadly, from a consumers point of view, ISO standards -- at least as they exist today -- are not only meaningless, but are quite often misleading. It simply means that the product produced by an ISO certified company meets the standards set by the company making the product. It might be consistently good or consistently bad. That is still up to the manufacturer. Del
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