 Knabe & Co., with Chickering & Sons and the Foster-Armstrong Co., of East Rochester, New York, formed the American Piano Co. under the laws of New Jersey, headed by Ernst J. Knabe, Jr., president, and C. H. W. Foster of Chickering & Sons, and George G. Foster, of Foster-Armstrong, controlling their respective companies as well as Haines Brothers, Marshall & Wendell, Brewster, and J.B. Cook & Co. with a combined output of about 18,000 pianos a year.Ernest and William Knabe resigned their positions in 1909, and following a series of business troubles in New York they incorporated Knabe Brothers in Ohio in 1911, with offices at Cincinnati, manufacturing upright and grand pianos at a former Smith and Nixon factory in nearby Norwood, "free from the yoke of a commercialism that figured out pianos by square inches of wood and decimal points in the allotment of wires".