Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum NOS Petrof IV -- needs regulation, why?

Hi,

I was able to purchase a virtually unused 1998 Petrof IV from someone who bought it new for their daughter who took 2 lessons and then quit. The piano sat unused for 14 years until I bought it (after having it inspected by an out of town RPT piano tech) and had it shipped to my home for $8K (a very good price) based on Larry Fine's rating of this piano as concert quality/level 3 (just one step below Steinway NY).

My (in town) piano tech is telling me it needs a soup to nuts regulation including hammer filing, voicing, hammer/string alignment, let-off, damper timing, key weighting, etc. ALONG with new bass strings.

I had another piano expert (Rapport Piano Rebuilders) come and look at it and she agreed that it needed the full regulation, hammer work, voicing, etc. She didn't think the bass strings were that bad but thought the dampers need to be replaced. (Some of the dampers were definitely not working well)

Why is this unused piano in such a sad state? Everything we're seeing has to have come straight from the factory. What's up with that?

I've had 3 different quotes for the regulation from $1500, $2000, and $2500 + ($800 extra for the damper work).

I'm not sure which person to trust/pay. Everyone agrees (including me) that regulation is needed but not everyone agrees on what that entails. One wants to file the hammers the other says the hammers are small and shouldn't be filed. One wants to replace the damper felts the other says they just need to be adjusted. What's a consumer to do?

There is one piece of good news, I went up to the Rapport workshop (the high bidder) and they had just finished rebuilding a Steinway S and I got to play it a while before the movers came. All I can say is that after a while I closed the lid and pushed away ... the piano was too nice for me, my playing was doing it an injustice. It was that good (and I've played like 50 - 60 pianos all over the place before purchasing the Petrof and this Steinway was CRAZY good).

So my question is ... is a regulation a regulation, or does every piano tech use the same words to mean different things? Are there measurable, factual, things that constitute a regulation such that there's no ambiguity in the work or is it subjective where a more expensive/more experienced person would provide a significantly better result?

I'm really at a loss on what to do here and the money is to much for me to take chances on someone on doing a poor job, but I don't want to spend double either? What am I to do?

J.

There may be several contributing reasons to why the piano needs regulating . . .

1) Maybe it was never properly regulated in the factory.
2) Maybe it never received proper dealer prep.
3) Time plus gravity will cause felts and leathers to compress just sitting there. Seasonal humidity fluctuations can affect alignment and action centers. Metal components get layers of crud/corrosion as a matter of course.

Such is the way of things in the piano world . . .

You speak of "Rapport Piano Rebuilders". If you mean "Rapoport", Joel and Priscilla Rapoport know pretty much what they are doing.

You need to understand that some recommendations are based on judgement that emerges from years of experience. Take dampers, for example. It may be that the existing dampers "could" be renewed just by peeling and re-regulating. On the other hand, this approach might not work because the felts have "set" in a way that renders them uncooperative to manipulation. So, some technicians might just prefer to replace the felts and be done with it. They may want to avoid the "you touched it last" syndrome that can and does occur. Some quality technicians might go one way and others the more conservative approach.

Also, you need to understand that the practice of piano technology is an art as well as a science. The piano itself is made of extremely variable products like felt, leather and wood. There are significant variations that happen in piano building from "tolerance stacking". If piano building were a matter of reducing everything to digital information, Steinway would have been out of business long ago since anyone with CNC machinery would be able to duplicate one. And, since there are not really any "set in stone" specs for a truly fine regulation, an experienced piano craftsman can be expected to produce a finer result than someone just following a book.

Keith,

Thanks for your reply, and yes I do mean Rapoport Piano Rebuilders in Geogetown TX. Priscilla came down today and told me that it "wasn't a total disaster" :-)

I'm leaning towards having her do the work, but was wondering if regulating a piano was a demonstrable activity or was of a more a whole being greater than the sum of it's parts type thing (which you've indicated).

I guess I'm just having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that the value the regulation/damper work is nearly 1/2 the cost of purchasing the entire piano.

J.

And here, it's just a matter of adopting an appropriate frame of reference. . .

It's a smaller fraction of the brand-new price today -- which it is likely to be better than by the time the work is done.
OR
It's like a 10-year-old car that was run a little bit and then parked -- without fogging the cylinders or jacking the tires off the ground. Just sitting there, the thing needs a tuneup, new tires and belts.
OR
More simply . . . service needs have little connection to purchase price.

Hello,

It's actually Rappaport! Joel and Priscilla, have a world class resume. I would certainly take advantage of their skills. Here is a bio on them:

"Joel worked for over five years in grand piano production in the Bösendorfer factory in Vienna and the Bechstein factory in Berlin where his activities included all facets of the building, regulation, tuning and voicing of grand pianos. He attended the world famous school for piano builders in Ludwigsburg, Germany, graduating with honors, and passed the State Examinations for the Master Piano Builders Diploma at the Handwerkskammer in Stuttgart. He has had technical training with Steinway company personnel in New York, Hamburg and London as well as specialized training on Shigeru pianos at the Kawai factory in Japan. Further experience has included Chief Piano Technician at Tanglewood (the summer home of the Boston Symphony), extensive rebuilding in his own shop, concert services nationwide, and educational/technical presentations at many conventions and seminars for piano technicians. Today, Joel and his wife Priscilla, also a Master Piano Builder, operate Rappaport's Piano Workshop in Round Rock, Texas and have been profiled in The New York Times by esteemed music critic Harold Schonberg.”

I knew that!

Thanks for the correction and contribution.

No problem Keith!

I'm actually planning on spending a week at their workshop sometime in February! I'm so looking forward to it!

Petrof grands are difficult to regulate.. They have an interesting sound body but the action is special. I new front punchings can help, but the hammers are very tall, and if compared with modern common setups.. I would not say they are really in the concert category but sure something can be done with them.
The older series have a special keyboard and damper action, and not my preference, but as the keyframe is shortened, and not easy to dress straight.
More recent designs are interesting

Because the instrument has been idle for 14 years it surprises me that none of the technicians has mentioned the knuckles.

I would think they are pretty deformed (flattened out) from sitting with the weight on them for so long and would require replacements. Just a guess as there are no photos of this one.

One thing that nobody buying a piano considers and if they do consider it they believe it, is what they are being told. Like the internet. Because it is wrtten, therefore, it must be true. Because someone said it wasn't used for 14 years, it' must be true.... Maybe so but, I doubt it was entirely never used.

Pianos are used a lot more often than you are being told in most cases. The daughter practiced on it for at least 2 years so there are two years of use right there. I don't usually believe that people let pianos set around all the time, never, ever being used, ever....

When you have someone that is very reputable give you an estimate, it will be higher than some Joe blow down the road who is not doing the extensive regulation that includes a lot more than just pulling the action, cleaning it and putting back together again.

You will get what you pay for.

Yes, indeed. You are absolutely correct.

Actually it was implicit in what I had said earlier
"3) Time plus gravity will cause felts and leathers to compress just sitting there."

But it was good to identify that explicitly. Knuckles aren't cheap . . .

Larry Fine rates Petrof as better than a lot of pianos (including Yamaha C-series and Kawai RX-series) and in the "Performance" grade.

http://www.pianobuyer.com/fall12/44.html

[edit: I also made sure this rating was true in 1998 when the piano was manufactured by buying the 1998 version of the PianoBuyer supplement]

Do you (or anyone else) disagree? If so, I'm very interested in your reasons why as I'm basing my financial decisions on the expected quality and performance of this piano per Larry's rating. (i.e. I'm willing to put all this money into a piano that is expected to perform just below a NY Steinway, but I wouldn't want to do it for a J.P. Pramberger)

Thank you for any advise you can give.

J.

Are you going into the business of buying and selling grand pianos? Or are you a piano owner? Because you seem fixated on the selling price of your piano after work-you sound like a dealer. You got several estimates that do not seem that variable from my perspective and they all indicate similar service needs. Each tech will have a slightly different approach and overhead structure. The price range you showed is not that great. You have auditioned at least one of the technicians why not audition the others tone-regulation/work if possible. Then develop a professional relationship with the one who seems to jibe with your musicality. Buy the musical qualities you want produced for you. A lot of the "value" of a grand piano is how well it sounds and plays. The value to the name on the fallboard is limited. The used Steinway's that sell at premium price points are ones that present at least as good as most new ones to a pianist and are guaranteed by a reputable establishment.

Hey, man, it's only money and you get what you pay for.

If you bought a frikkin Petrof, and played a Steinway that you perceived was too good for you, pay the frikkin money to the people who did the Steinway to work on your Petrov. C'mon and get real!

Plus, if rysowers told me to go for it, that's all I would need to hear. And you've gotten a ton of other excellent advice in this thread besides that!

PM me if you want, and I'll explain further.

--Andy

If a piano has been given no more than routine service and light use after 15 years, I would expect that it would not need any new parts unless they are obviously defective, and that it would take no more than 2 days work in your home to bring it up to a reasonable standard. 1 or 1-1/2 days would be more likely.

I look at regulation as a routine service that pianos should get at a reasonable price fairly often, and I usually can get a piano in reasonably good shape for 2 to 4 times the cost of a tuning, or less if it is done at the proper intervals. If a concert artist is said to be particularly picky about pianos (something that is usually more psychological than physical), an hour's worth of touch-up regulation has proven to be sufficient. Personally, I would rather regulate 95 pianos to about 95% of perfect for a few hundred dollars every couple of years than regulate 5 piano to close to 100% perfect for a couple thousand dollars every couple of years, not so much because I would make more money, but because more people would appreciate their pianos that way.

Nope.



Yep. Something like that...

Yes pianos wear even if they are standing still. Felt and leather detoriates, constant pressure on them, metal getting stiffer, etc. I heard before that strings last about 15 years in standing still conditions.

You should have a tech look at it BEFORE you bought it so that you could anticipate the additional cost...

Petrof grand are decent European pianos as soon they have a Renner action.

Beforethen I don't like the action and keyboard.

Even on 2000 models I am not fan of very tall hammers, but Alas not much can be done about that.

Dan I don't see any reason for standing knuckles to wear after 15 years. I In fact a 15 years old piano could well be considered as "new".. Some pianos sold in some shops could have been build 10 years ago, I delivered u years ago and wait for a customer the rest of the time...

I hope you find someone you can trust, who will indeed do the work properly and not charge you for anything unnecessary.

There is as much difference between regulations as there are types of pianos. We call them all pianos - but the experience of a Yamaha is worlds apart from a Steingraeber.

I would suggest that the technician who doesn't recognize the difference between levels of service and the extreme variablility possible, is one you don't want working on your piano.

Tunewerk, can you please explain what "world's apart" difference there is between the Yamaha and Steingraeber regulation is?