In 1989, Seattle businessman Bernard "Bud" Greer purchased the Sohmer company, which also held the George Steck, Knabe, and Mason & Hamlin names, technical specifications, and manufacturing equipment. Over the decades, the designs of the pianos were altered to the extent that they had little in common with the "classic" Mason & Hamlin pianos of the pre-Depression era. Ownership of Mason & Hamlin changed hands several times during the post-war era, becoming part of the Sohmer piano company in 1985. Piano manufacturing ceased in the United States in 1942 under authority of the War Production Board due to the Second World War, and Mason & Hamlin production shifted to military gliders. During this time the company began sponsoring the Mason and Hamlin Prize piano competition. In 1932 it became part of Aeolian-American when the two companies merged, which consolidated the control of more than twenty brands of pianos Mason & Hamlin, which had been at the former Hallet, Davis & Company piano factory in Neponset, Massachusetts, was moved to a separate plant at the Aeolian-American complex in East Rochester, New York at this time. American's sales began to decline in 1928, and following its collapse in the wake of the stock market collapse in late 1929, Mason & Hamlin's trademark, inventory and equipment were sold to American's competitor Aeolian for $450,000 while the factory buildings were sold off separately by the end of the following year. Mason & Hamlin's role in this company was later described as the "artist's"' brand among the firm's premier lines which included Chickering and Sons ("family use") and Wm. The Cable Company, a Chicago piano manufacturing company, owned an interest in Mason & Hamlin from 1904 to 1924, when it was sold to the American Piano Company. In my opinion, the Mason & Hamlin is a real work of art." It is not short of being a small orchestra. Composer Maurice Ravel said of Mason & Hamlin pianos, "While preserving all the qualities of the percussion instrument, the Mason & Hamlin pianoforte also serves magnificently the composer's concept by its extensive range in dynamics, as well as quality of tone.
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20th century īy the turn of the 20th century, the Golden Age of the Piano was in full force and the most illustrious concert artists of the day aligned themselves with piano manufacturers including Sergei Rachmaninoff whose 1924 recording of his Second Piano Concerto was made using a Mason & Hamlin. The firm advertises that it is currently used in all Mason & Hamlin pianos. This was first included in their grands in 1900. Gertz was elected secretary of the company in 1903, and president in 1906, and had patented the company's Tension Resonator, a device fastened to the perimeter of the wooden structure of pianos meant to prevent their sounding boards from flattening. Gertz, an independent piano designer from Germany who had created new scales for them earlier that year. In 1895, the piano department was completely reorganized by Richard W. Initially they built only upright pianos featuring a patented method of tuning and maintaining string tension which they marketed as the screw stringer and intended as an improvement over the traditional system with tuning pins. Mason & Hamlin began manufacturing pianos in 1883. Mason & Hamlin supplied organs to several prominent composers, notably Franz Liszt, whose name the company applied to their patented selective sustain mechanism for organs comparable to the sostenuto in pianos. By the early 1870s they were considered the largest and most important manufacturer of reed organs, employing about 500 and producing as many as 200 instruments a week. This design placed the bellows vertically and underneath the reeds, and served as the model for the suction operated American-style reed organ. They originally manufactured only melodeons, but in 1855 introduced the organ-harmonium or flat-topped cabinet organ. Mason & Hamlin was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1854 by Henry Mason, son of Lowell Mason, the American hymn composer and musical educator, and Emmons Hamlin, a mechanic and inventor who had worked for melodeon makers Prince & Co.
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