lyon&healy chicago concert grand??

[tony-morosco]

I think the thing to keep in mind regarding product quality from China is that the company that is outsourcing to China for the products still has final say over the quality.

The reason so many Chinese made products turn out to be problematic to out right defective is that the companies paying the Chinese to produce the product are willing to accept substandard products for cheaper prices.

The Chinese are perfectly capable of producing high quality products, but too many companies are willing to accept the substandard products to save even more money.

So to me ultimately the question isn’t if the product was made in China. The question is how much do you trust the company that has outsourced production of something to China? Because ultimately if it is made in China or not, Lyon and Healy is responsible for the end product. They will either ensure that the parts or products they outsource to China are of high enough quality or they will not.

Of course as others have mentioned there are other issues with outsourcing to China such as their labor policies. But in terms of quality of the product we shouldn’t forget that the responsibility for quality lies in the company who’s name goes on the product.

[Maria Myers]

With China’s horrible record (bad products, recalls, human rights violations against their own people, etc.) I wouldn’t outsource to them if I were a reputable company.

[carl-swanson]

Tony- There is a basic rule in business(which I NEVER adhered to) that says: If no one is complaining about a fault in the product you are selling, and it’s not affecting sales, then there is no reason to fix it. So many products stay on the market with very obvious problems, and until the day that sales slump because of this problem, the company won’t do anything about it. My mention above of screws from China is a typical example.

A more odious example is that of the Ford Pinto in the 1960’s or ’70’s, where Ford KNEW that the gas tank, positioned at the back of the car, could cause anyone in the car to be burned to death if the car was in a rear end collision. But they calculated the cost of changing the design and compared it to the cost of law suits that would come from the accidents resulting in death that they would have to face, and decided it was cheaper to leave the gas tank where it was and pay the occasional lawsuit. In a landmark case against Ford, the jury in one such law suit awarded the victim’s family a stupefying judgement, explaining that the award was twice what Ford had calculated they would have to pay, thereby sending a message that leaving a known faulty design in place would cost much more than changing the design.

In the case of harps. as long as the faulty part is not causing a slump in sales, the company won’t bother to fix it or change anything about how they have their parts made.

[tony-morosco]

That is true Carl. Ultimately the responsibility for these situations can be spread out down the line up to and including the customer who is willing to accept inferior quality in exchange for lower prices.

People want cheap and they are willing to compromise on quality. Wallmart wouldn’t be able to run smaller stores out of business if people weren’t willing to buy their cheap Chinese made products in order to save some money.

I just mean to say that I can’t lay all the blame on the Chinese. If a company isn’t willing to insist on top quality because they think they can get away with it then hopefully the customers will vote with their wallets by buying from somewhere else, or at least raising a stink when the product doesn’t live up to it’s expectations.

I don’t know how much of Lyon and Healy’s parts are made in China, and I don’t even know if the quality of those parts that are made in China really are inferior or if there are just a few fluke problems that can be accounted for by the simple fact of the law of averages applied to the vast number of harps they produce.

But in the end each individual harp has the Lyon and Healy name on it, and if they put out a product with their name on it that has problems I would hope that people would pay attention. If there really is a problem or not I don’t know, but I do know that if my Lyon and Healy harp suffers from a defect that shouldn’t be there and they can’t explain it or take care of it they will lose my business, just like any other company that didn’t live up the the expectations they themselves build up would.

There are

[Maria Myers]

“The reason so many Chinese made products turn out to be problematic
to out right defective is that the companies paying the Chinese to
produce the product are willing to accept substandard products for
cheaper prices.

The Chinese are perfectly capable of producing high quality
products, but too many companies are willing to accept the substandard
products to save even more money.”

The source of the problem is that the Chinese aren’t putting out good products almost across the board.

[carl-swanson]

-I really doubt that the big harpmakers have outsourced their actions oversees.-

Maria- Ask Lyon & Healy where their main action parts are made, and where their main actions are assembled? Also, where is their linkage made, and spindles, pedal bars, pedal couplers and coupler screws, action couplers, discs, and back plate screws. Ask them where their linkage is riveted together. Ask them if the main action of a Lyon & Healy harp is the same main action used on a Salvi harp. Ask them if the action used on all the Lyon & Healy semi-grand harps is in fact a Lyon & Healy action, or if it is a Salvi action that says Lyon & Healy on the front plate. I’ll be curious to see what they tell you.

[robert-stone]

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know if there have been experiments using a material other than wood on the neck of a pedal harp?

[catherine-rogers]

Camac uses carbon fibre integrated with the wood in some parts of its harps, particularly the soundboard, column, neck. The way it’s used has varied over the years as the factory continues to tweak its designs. The harps are strong but lighter weight than comparably sized harps. The sound is good or great, depending on the individual instrument, as with every other manufacturer.

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