<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2963" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV> <DIV>  <STRONG><EM>Ric</EM></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><EM>  Mainly I was curious as to wether they've discontinued the use of wippen assist spring & overly heavy hammers which routinely sabatoge the otherwise nicely desgined action ratio of Aprrox. 5.3.  You know?</EM></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><EM>  Dale</EM></STRONG></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Actually, there is a lot going on at Petrof at the present.  There seems <BR>to have been a light turned on for some of the top brass of the company. <BR>They believe that with in the next few years the Chinese will totally <BR>dominate the low end market, and the only survivors in the west will be <BR>high end instruments... and they mean real high end. The way I read his <BR>comments he more or less said that if you cant get right up their with <BR>Hamburg Steinway, Bosendorfer, and Fazioli.... you might as well as well <BR>shut down now.  <BR><BR>So.... yes... the Petrof action is going under some big overhauls as <BR>well.  There was some talk about using the felt punchings André <BR>introduced to many of us as well. They are building there own action and <BR>action parts again.  And the design has been revamped somewhat. I don't <BR>have the exact details for you  but it is similar to the Renner action <BR>by his description and incorporates some elements from the pre 1940 <BR>Petrof instrument.  I have to believe tho that they will stick with <BR>their individual fitting of hammer bores to each section for each piano.<BR><BR>Hope that answers you at least in part.<BR><BR>Cheers<BR>RicB</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV> </DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>