Baldwin marketing two different concert grand models?

[keyboardkat]

If you go on Baldwin's (Gibson's) website, you will find two different 9' concert grands featured.  One is our old favorite, the SD-10.  But the other I don't know anything about.  The keyboard end of the case has a sort of Japanese look to it.  It, I think, weighs more than an SD-10, and I think it costs a little less, but only a little.

Is this a Chinese or Japanese made piano that Baldwin is marketing in competition with its own SD-10?  Are they reviving the SD-6 scale design so that pianists will have a choice?  Or something else?   Does anybody know what gives with this?

[keys60]

Not sure, but there are a few piano companies that do this, like the Yamahas GH, G and C series. The Kawai has a few series too. Forgot the lower end, then the RX series and the the premium Shigeru. Its not really competing with themselves. Its being able to sell pianos for the varying budget. Steinway selling the Essex, Boston and Steinway is another example, although different names.

[keyboardkat]

Steinway does not make a concert grand version of the Essex or Boston.  Their Model D concert grand is the flagship.  Kawai makes the EX concert grands, and the Shiguru concert grands favored by Earl Wild at the end of his career.

But in this case, both instruments are labeled Baldwin.   I think it's a bizarre business decision.  But Gibson hasn't really given Baldwin the attention and support it promised.

Any company management that, on taking over, would have a press conference at which a grand piano was dropped from a helicopter to a parking lot and smashed, to symbolize "out with the old and in with the new" has no credibility with me.   They are emphasizing their guitars and guitar accessories and guitar artists, I feel at the expense of the Baldwin Piano division.
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[keys60]

Ok. Point taken. Didn't know we were only talking concert grands here.