“I am very pleased. Amazing how different it sounds from the C7. I like it. I’m
getting used to the sound and realize that I will be spoiled forever. No going back.
I haven’t heard the sound out in the room yet, but Trish says it is quite different and much better. Not as loud as she expected. It fills the house, but is not harsh. From the bench the notes are clear and full. I have so much more control of the tone. Chopin is wonderful. I also play jazz and stride and I improvise differently and better with this piano. Because of the full tone, a melody line can stand better on its own and that actually opens more options in improvising. I love it.
Dale, you got the action just right. It is so easy to play. Ivory was the way to go, feels so good.”

Dick Steffen

Here’s what Charles had to say about his Mason & Hamlin CC 9ft. Grand.

“Dale,
Thank you for having me over yesterday. I was really delighted with what you’ve done with my piano!
I think you were completely successful in what you did. You have preserved the essential character of the piano—just made it even better.

As far as I could tell in your shop, I love the tone. There’s a wonderful difference between loud and soft!!!! The soft pedal really works! The notes are full without being “notey” or clangy. The attack does not seem to be the loudest part of the sound! In fact, when I first played that low C, it seemed to grow after the initial attack.

The action is just incredible. As I said, things that were problematical before, now just “happen” on the new action. It is lighter, but still has wonderful response and feedback. Suddenly, I’m a better pianist! The dynamic range is great. Wow…

The pedals are perfect. I was sure I was going to ask for an adjustment in the depth of travel of the damper pedal, but I liked it. The sostenuto pedal FINALLY seems to work perfectly.”

-Charles Cramer
Charles Cramer Photography

“As a side note I’d like to say Charles is a wonderful pianist with a performance degree from Eastman school of music and has produced several recordings on the Mason & Hamlin CC concert grand pictured below.

-Dale Erwin

The concert Saturday afternoon at the Cal State Conference was like nothing I can remember. Maybe I need to get out more. Richard Glazier playing a ‘28 S&S D restored by Dale Erwin with a new board. Just the piano and artist, no amplification, no other instruments or vocals. The piano filled the auditorium beautifully as it was designed to do. I think I had forgotten the power that a piano can have. I’m so proud to know Dale and to be able to
call myself his student.

I played the piano before the concert, I’ve also played it at Dale’s shop. All different rooms, each giving the piano a different sound. The piano is a joy to play, so easy. In the auditorium 30 feet out it was a completely different instrument again, sounding as it should, in it’s role of filling an auditorium. The bass had a beautiful growl to it and all registers were well balanced. The killer octave sounded like I think it should. Voicing was right down the middle.

More important the artist was able to completely meld with
the piano. No action saturation, no distortion, absolute power, striking the keys from 3 feet above them, down to beautiful melodic passages that went straight to the back of the hall.

Hat’s off to you, Dale. Your ‘D’ was the star of the show.

BTW with reference to Dale Erwin’s “Remanufactured 1928 Steinway D,” I played that piano starting with a simple bass octave in which the power, tone, and sustain about gave me goose bumps. What a beautiful piano and restoration. I was going to take it home with me but couldn’t fit it under my coat even after I let the air out of it and rolled it up. Dang.

“Having played many good pianos over the course of my career, I found Dale Erwin’s Restored Steinway Concert Grand to be among the very finest. Such power, combined with glorious tone colors…”

The PTG convention, for me and especially for my booth-sharing brother Dale Erwin, was a luminous, triumphant time. His rebuilt, new-board 1928 Steinway D, side by side with my old-board Mason & Hamlin CC, were really kind of the buzz of the show, and on Saturday I was witness to one of the best concerts I have ever heard—-on Dale’s D. It was in a 400-seat, sweet little auditorium, and the program was Gershwin, played by a world-class pianist, Richard Glazer, who has dedicated his professional and personal life to the music of George and Ira Gershwin.

To say that Dale’s D was triumphant, shining, beautiful, powerful—-it doesn’t quite get it. A concert grand’s true power to amaze doesn’t come out unless the artist is capable, and loving the instrument. It crashes; it screams; it whispers; it sings. The true power of THIS piano was evident from the first note of the concert to the last——it was certainly one of the two or three best instruments I have ever heard in concert in 40 years. I was completely, and I mean completely blown away. So was everybody else in the room; before the last number, the pianist turned to the audience and said something to the effect that this was a truly great piano, that it could do anything he asked it to; that it had shown him colors and tonal shadings he had never heard before; that it almost played itself; that he was so inspired that he would now play the entire “Rhapsody in Blue” suite, uninterrupted, and “give it my best, my all.” Wow. I have never heard anything like it in my life.

The audience would not stop clapping and yelling.

My friends, there is a true artisan in Modesto, California. To be able to make a piano sound and feel this beautiful, not only in the shop, but on the stage, is the work of a rare, rare artist. I am humbly grateful to be the friend, student, peer and collaborator of Dale Erwin.

That was Dale’s first re-creation of a Steinway D sound board, which makes it all that much more mind-blowing.

In the near future, and for as long as he’s working, artists and appreciators will beat a path to this man’s door from all over the world, begging him to let them put their fingers on his beautiful creations.
God willing, I’ll be there smiling and sticking my head inside the pianos to feel and hear the beauty.