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Hello Everyone,

I am posting this information here because I wish I had found it posted somewhere last week!

I own a Petrof Model VI grand, built in about 1998. Last week we needed to move it to another room, and we hired top notch professional instrument movers.

All went well until they tried to remove the legs. They removed the bolts, and tapped on the legs with a rubber mallet from the outside edge towards the center of the piano, as is the proper procedure on almost any grand piano.

The legs would not budge. They tried using a bit more force, but again, no movement, and since they were concerned about damaging the finish or the leg itself, they did not want to use any more force.

It became clear that there must be some unique "trick" to removing a Petrof leg. The movers and I must have called 10 dealers, technicians, and other movers, but no one seemed to know what to do. We called the Petrof US representative in Georgia, but they were of no help.

A long search on the internet yielded nothing, except for information about a special locking leg feature used in Petrofs since 2003 or so, but my piano is from about 1998 and definitely did not have this extra bolt.

Finally, a person who specializes in piano refinishing had the answer. So I have joined this site to post this information in case anyone else ever needs it. Petrof should put this on their site, too, but I got the impression that they are only a skeleton operation in the US. It's too bad, because we love our Petrof.


To Remove the legs from a Petrof from the 1990's era (and maybe earlier models):

On the legs near the keyboard:
1) remove the two bolts from each leg
2) tap with the mallet from the tail side towards the keyboard, not towards the center
3) tap again in the opposite direction. It is a two step process--tap towards the keyboard and then
away from it again. If it has not been moved recently, I may take some force.

On the leg near the tail (assuming you now have the piano sideways on a moving board by this stage)

1) tap down towards the floor
2) tap up again towards the ceiling

This may be very awkward, since you may not have much room for swinging your mallet on the
underside of the leg. We had to tip the piano slightly to get the proper angle.

Note that this entire procedure is awkward (at least on my model) since you are tapping against the narrow, tapered side of the leg block, and not on the broad side.

Also note that the pedal lyre has two wooden dowels attaching it in addition to the bolts. In our case, the dowels were swollen, so it took some downward force to release it.

I hope this helps someone, someday. The internet has answered vital questions for me on countless occasions, so it's only right to add to the collection of knowledge when possible.

It is information like this which makes this piano site even more valuable. Great thread for the archives.

Even though I will probably never need to use the info, I want to let you know that your contribution is appreciated!

BTW, are you in the MA Ipswich Clam industry? YUM!

LL

Wow, Ipswich Clam, what a story! Thanks so much for taking the time to post this information. I'm sure it will be helpful to somebody down the road.

I hope that the movers figured out how to get the legs off before any damage occurred.

Didn’t work today. We had to take the piano away with the legs on unfortunately. This link shows a photo [img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/hw6Gu2hdfEauNRKC8[/img]

All legs were completely stuck after 19 years of sitting

Piano moving services in Greater London