- Steinway & Sons builds 1,711 upright pianos – 61 more than two years previously.
- Steinway & Sons pianos are used at 1,040 concerts in New York City – 135 more than in 1956.
- Steinway & Sons grand piano sales have increase by 45% since 1956.
- Even though Henry Z. Steinway at this point still expresses to the Board of Directors his certainty that switching to Teflon (“permafree”) bushings had been a great idea, numerous complaints about the quality of action in the recently built Steinway & Sons pianos finally begin to reach the company. The problems plague mostly private piano owners, because Steinway & Sons grand pianos in concert halls are regulated and tuned daily by the most experienced tuners, and any issue is likely to be discovered and eliminated before the piano is used by a musician. The actions of home pianos with Teflon bushings, on the other hand, become sluggish in winter and develop knocking noises in summer, and home piano tuners, unfamiliar with Teflon, struggle to figure out which of 1,130 joings in the action mechanism is making noise, and why. The tuners, reluctant to admit their lack of experience, vilify new Steinway & Sons pianos. Despite the avalanche of complaints, not before 1982 will Henry Z. Steinway admit that using Teflon bushings has been a fiasco. Teflon bushings have become one of the contributing factors of the partial decline of the reputation of the American-made Steinway & Sons pianos until the turning point of the next millennium. Hamburg branch of Steinway & Sons has never used Teflon, because instead of making its own piano action, it buys it from Rennert & Company, whose owner, Dr. Rennert, adamant opponent of using Teflon in piano action, persuades Walter Günther to resist the American innovation. Running a very profitable operation, Walter Günther has a lot of leverage in the company, and Henry Z. Steinway allows him to keep the traditional felt bushings in the Hamburg-made Steinway & Sons pianos.