<HTML>Patrick, These are made by Pearl River.  Overall, they are far better than t= he Samicks I've seen coming out of China.  They are not the worst new = pianos I've worked on. The hammers tend to be really soft.  Some of the= newer ones seem to be finding a happy medium "between a rock and a soft pla= ce".     I've done a couple that came in as dealer "deals" where there were sever= al different sizes of tuning pins, and major string jumping.  And the a= mount of lost motion suggested that there was a fair amount of green wood us= ed in assembling the piano. Is there a remedy for a piano where just about every tuning pin is jumpy= ?  Does time cure this?   Dave Stahl In a message dated 2/27/03 9:13:03 PM Pacific Standard Time, mjbkspal@ex= ecpc.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-= LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Patrick, I believe the name is owned by North American Music, who are the importe= r for Hyundai.  The Hyundai dealer I sometimes do prep for  occasi= onally has a Hallet & Davis microgrand on the floor.  3 years ago t= hey looked just like a Hyundai.  More recently, I think he told me they= were coming from China.   Just looked it up in Fine's PIano Book.  Yes, North American Music,= yes, formerly made by Samick nearly identical to Hyundai's also made by Sam= ick, yes, more recently made by one of two Chinese manufacturers. As far as quality and prep are concerned, they didn't seem worse than th= eir peers in any way.  Pitch raise and tune, a couple hours of regulati= ng and hammer softening (or, for Chinese pianos, hammer hardening) would gen= erally make them as good as they were intended to be.   hope this helps Mike Spalding RPT</BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>