Hi Ric Having extensive experience with Petrofs I can say right off that your general description of <<potentially very good sound qualities>> coupled with <<lousy feel to the touch>> is something I have been frustrated with since I first run into them. The actions are often very poorly put together and there are other typical problems that pop up on examples of the make. That said.... I have to say they are one of the pianos I find most rewarding to work on... exactly because of that overall sound picture. The action is something that is easy to access, easy to work on independant of the piano as it were... and you can zip up an Petrof action quite a bit with some straightforward action work. One thing I find contributes to what I personally dont like about the Petrof touch is that action felts are very soft. New (firmer felt) front punchings, centerpin bushins, and whippen cushions can make a big difference in Petrofs. Petrofs official voicing as I understand it is crown area only oriented. They do not usually employ laquer but rather very hard hammers and there is no deep shoulder needling. This was related to me by Andre' after one of his visits there. If you are lucky you wont have to do major re-allignment of parts. If you on top of things do some basic Stanwood action balancing then you can end up with a very fine playing action indeed and bring out that nice sound picture to its fullest. Petrofs are easy to criticize for sure, but they are very nicely priced and they do indeed have a very nice sound. And most of the problems they have most of the time are fairly easy to rectify. In most regards.. a tone builders dream come true. You can make a big noticible difference that the customer will love you for. Cheers RicB Hi List, I am trying to find out more about Petrof grand actions and what appears to be a problem with their setting-up/geometry etc. I recently came across a 12 year old large grand which has potentially very good sound qualities but a lousy feel to the touch. Whilst I need to go back and carry out an in-depth inspection to make further judgement, my limited experience of Petrof grands is that they generally have a question mark over the touch. There are some quite negative comments on the web, particularly from a team from a music institution who tried out several instruments. Have any of you action geometry guys had experience of analyzing the Petrof action and doing any re-thinking on it? This particular one is quoted as having a Renner action. I would appreciate any leads on this before I venture quite a long distance to see it again. Thanks, ric
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