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Greetings piano technicians,

I realise this might be an imposition on your forum, but I've been unable to get a technician's perspective of these piano brands. The specific models concerned being the Petrof IV and V, and the Hailun 178.

Have any of you worked on these pianos? What are your thoughts on their construction and quality?

Both are very cheap for what the purport to be. The Petrof is claimed to be totally handmade in the Czech Republic using high quality materials and parts. It's a fine piano to play, sounds lovely, but how are they able to produce it for such a low relative price? Much cheaper than competing handmade European pianos. Is there a missing link in there - is it a piano with Chinese influence? And is that necessarily a bad thing? Does anybody here have any knowledge of the Petrof manufacturing and parts sourcing?

The Hailun 178 is amazing to play for the money. Sounds and plays like a piano more than double the price. But that's when it's new. What can I expect in the future from this piano - 5 years, 10 years from now? Are there major shortcuts taken on materials that will make this piano a liability in the future?

This will be the only grand piano I ever buy, so I don't take the decision lightly. The technical aspects are something I don't have the ability to fully appreciate at this stage, so I would greatly appreciate any thoughts any of you techs have.

Any comments welcome!

Cheers.

No Chinese influence in Petrof, but a long tradition in piano building for themselves or other brands (Hoffmann by Bechstein where made by Petrof for some time)

They also worked for years to assemble the Renner actions for the Renner factory (when actions where sold mounted to other factories)

And the Petrof grup is producing many metal parts, brass aluminium, I belive many of them are sold by Renner (agrafes, capstans) the quality of the parts used on Petrof is good.

I dont have a clue about Hailun but tht is not same materials and category, to me.

Cost is just cheaper for Tcheckian build pianos, as usual, but since 2000 the quality is really good.

Now I dont know about really recent models, but I doubt they ask anything to asia, not the character of the people there...

Have never worked on or played a Hailun, so don't know. However, I've never met a Petrof I didn't like, and that's both from a technical and playing point of view.

I do prep work for a dealer that has been selling Hailun for over a year. He is also a Young Chang dealer. I have no experience with the Petrof, there are no dealers that I know of in my area.

He has had very good success with the Hailun, people chose it over the Young Chang all the time.

The only thing I can say about the Hailun is that the damper guide rail bushings always need to be eased, and the lyre system must be inspected closely, as they tend to squeak because they use too much glue in the bushings. A good dealer should be able to deal with that. I must say I am very impressed with the overall quality of the materials and workmanship.

I also ask myself how they can make such a quality piano for such a low price.

As far as longevity, only time will tell, but I would be confident to tell customers that with a 15 year warranty, not much to lose.


Good luck in your purchase.

This might be of interest.

Petrof and Hailun are...ahem...friends:

http://www.petrof.com/clanky-president-of-the-petrof-company-visited-china.html

We in Croatia have a lot of Petrofs since during communism it was very hard to import pianos out of east block. Out of all eastern pianos Petrof were the best. Nowdays we are out of east block but still not rich :-) , so we import a lot of chinese products. Wendl Lung or Feurich are for my opininion far away of Petrof, especially the wooden parts are very sensitive to moisture change. I have a lot of problems with center pins that often have too much friction, this is happening almoust allways after winter when a lot of moisture comes to the air. But not only that, overall, the quallity of Petrof cannot be compared with Hainlun, or, for now with any other chinese products. That is for now, because since Petrof is in very big problems (they had severe loses in the last years), maybe they will sacrifice quality to be more competitive on the market. Nowdays the european producers are in big problems, and since the people have allways less and less money, chinese products find a very good market. But, i have never heard a good chinese piano, for now, but since I know there is improvment that is audiable and visible, who knows, maybe they will learn sometime...

Hm about caracter Isaac...I was speaking with lot of german techs who are going every year to china to teach them how to build pianos. The deal is following, we will give you our pianos to sell them, with a very good earning ratio and you are obligated to come once a year to us and give us your knowledge. Now, it is a simple market thing one would think. But, the knowledge that is build in germany for a centuries is simply given away to someone who is destroying the same industry that is helping them learn to do something that was newer part of they tradition. Someone could give me a lecture about free market, idea flow that will help the industry by making the competitive atmosfere that will result in making better pianos, and so on, or even call me a protectionist, or worse economic ksenophobe, but is the industry better today? I think not, I think that cheap chinese pianos slaughtered the rest of the piano industry in Europe, I think that it is sad that our piano students are learning about piano sound on the base of pour quallity pianos. Who is making really good pianos today, and how many of theme are produced pro Year? Maybe couple of tousends, out of half of milion that are produced every year. So there is not a story about caracter, it is the story about money. Sad, but the piano industry in Europe that is half dead, will soon be completely dead.

thanks Mariotto. In the end this will not even help the Chinese main people nrither, in my opinion as we will not buy their goods indefinitively. At some point we will need to start producing for us again.

Thanks so much folks, for your thoughts, very enlightening indeed.

@ Kamin: it seems you are suggesting that the Petrofs may be cheaper at present than they normally would be because the company needs to keep sales going or risk being in serious financial trouble. So, that might partly explain my perception that the selling price of the Petrofs is lower than directly comparable handmade pianos from Europe? Of course, there's the financial problems in Europe that must be exposing all companies to varying amounts of pressure. Perhaps Petrof has been hit harder than some others.

@ Loren D: Yes, the Petrofs really speak to me more than any other piano I've considered. If I had an extra $10k lying around, I'd go and buy one tomorrow. The question for me is, is it worth it for me to not play on a grand for a few more years so I can buy the Petrof IV, or do I live for the moment and buy the Hailun? Very tough choice.

@ accordeur: Thanks for mentioning those potential service queries. Are those sorts of things always considered warranty items, covered outside of the usual free technician's visit after purchase? Or are they things that dealers are likely to brush off because it's a budget piano and they'll tell me the bushings will wear in with more playing?

@ Furtwangler: Yes, that had caught my eye! There's a lot of gamesmanship on the salesroom floor too. They're all implying things about their competitors' products. The suggestion of the Petrof/Hailun connection was just one of them.

@ Mariotto: So it sounds like you are quite firmly of the belief that European handmade pianos are still considerably ahead of their Chinese rivals in terms of stability, materials and workmanship. That would be the price differential then? I do think about the issues you mentioned about the total dominance of Chinese manufacturing and what it means to the rest of the world and trade balance. I'm in the unfortunate position of having to decide whether I enjoy a grand piano in my home now or 3 years from now - depending on whether I buy a Petrof or a Hailun. That dilemma is exactly what China models their market strategy on. They make all purchasing decisions very tough if you are not very wealthy.


Thanks again folks. Keep the thoughts coming if you have them.

With a good dealer, the issues I brought up you would not even know about. They would be taken care of before the sale.

If you have to wait 3 years or so be sure to sell your chines made before he loose much value. If Petrof are not made in 3 years you could buy a second hand one that will be yet a good instrument.

Never seen a Chinese product that last as is supposed to do a piano. (From top to bottom)

It is even computed from the start, so you need to buy another ...

15 years guarantee is marketing, 15 years is not much in a piano life fails occur the first year eventually (the ones that are covered) afterthat I have seen design flaws or more maintenance than expected, but nothing a guarantee would cover

I guess you have not seen the pianos coming out of China? You are servicing old established European pianos? When is the last time you prepped a new chinese piano. New!!

There is nothing I would like more than to see a new Canadian manufacturer of pianos. Or European, American for that matter.

But for now, the Chinese are beating the heck out of us.

Greetings,
I have been anxious to open a piano dealership and have been contacted by a Hailun representative. He has been very aggressive in wanting me to floor their instrument no matter how small the store is. I had a opportunity to go over a 7 foot Hailun about a year ago. I was impressed with how clean and well built they appear. One problem I noticed was the agraffee’s have a roller that the music wire is on. The wire sometimes seems to move a small amount from left to right. It will disturb the wire spacing at the damper felt and there is a problem with the tone leaking from the trichord movement. That was a year ago so perhaps they have changed that design already. Also, I am not a fan of whippen assist springs which they use. I believe a weighted key with lead provides the touch quality that we have been used to for centuries. I install player piano systems occasionally and the whip springs give a false sense of key weight to the solenoids. My two cents.

Indeed the few I see are yet a few years old and while well spaced or assembled Generally, they all have that hardness in tone underlying.

Yes hopefully for me I work on instruments essentially build in Europe, as I dont work for dealers, only on rental pianos sometime, my asian pianos are more Japanese than Chinese build.

But I hear those pianos getting better, what I also hear is the very aggressive and. Misleading marketing trying to have us compare those instruments with traditionally German build ones. This is just false idea it can be heard. Then piano technology and understanding had immensely improved during the last 20 years and this is at the advantage of industrial piano making.

Despite that, the value of the top technicians in the traditional factory make a real difference. Simply the musical taste have changed enough today for less rich sounding instruments to be accepted.

[/quote]

@ Mariotto: So it sounds like you are quite firmly of the belief that European handmade pianos are still considerably ahead of their Chinese rivals in terms of stability, materials and workmanship. That would be the price differential then? I do think about the issues you mentioned about the total dominance of Chinese manufacturing and what it means to the rest of the world and trade balance. I'm in the unfortunate position of having to decide whether I enjoy a grand piano in my home now or 3 years from now - depending on whether I buy a Petrof or a Hailun. That dilemma is exactly what China models their market strategy on. They make all purchasing decisions very tough if you are not very wealthy.


Thanks again folks. Keep the thoughts coming if you have them. [/quote]

I can talk from both the pianist and tech view. If I play on wendl lung or feurich I can not compare it with Petrof. To me chinese pianos lack of sound richness and magic, theye are simply boring. And I do not see that will change in the next decade, maybe never. Because, one cannot simply override centuries of tradition and the fact that the piano sound grew with the music and culture, side by side. Chinese are good in copying things, but if one does not understand why he is doing things, I dont belive he can do things well. I was once at the piano masterclass where we had a discussion about the future of piano playing. The conclusion was that one of the first problems is that we have every day less and less good pianos. The idea of piano sound is rapidly changing, to worse not better. We are in the position that the piano sound will not be in our hands, but in hands of people who live our culture for less than a half of the century. Sad...
Regarding quallity, I can talk about young chang, feurich or wendl loung. Bad quality, we have theme here in several music schools, so theye are under haevy regime, uncomparable with any europeans, too much problems, they are pianos that are suposed to last maybe some 10 years, I would like to see them after 50 or more years. I had similar dilema as you have. I bought Bechstein B from 1910. Totally rebuildt for less than 13000 eur. Maybe you schould go for that solution? Why new piano?

Not sure Isaac. Simply, with so high entry cost ( energy, labour, materials, taxes) I dont think we are in position to compete with China. Similar thing happened to us after fail of Yugoslavia. We entered in heavy competitive Europe and 20 years from then, we have practicaly no industry, we live of turism, retail and all that under haevy taxes. I think Europe is also not ready to live under new circumstances, and piano industry is only one thing that is whippend out, more and more things will fail with time...

@ Mariotto: So it sounds like you are quite firmly of the belief that European handmade pianos are still considerably ahead of their Chinese rivals in terms of stability, materials and workmanship. That would be the price differential then? I do think about the issues you mentioned about the total dominance of Chinese manufacturing and what it means to the rest of the world and trade balance. I'm in the unfortunate position of having to decide whether I enjoy a grand piano in my home now or 3 years from now - depending on whether I buy a Petrof or a Hailun. That dilemma is exactly what China models their market strategy on. They make all purchasing decisions very tough if you are not very wealthy.


Thanks again folks. Keep the thoughts coming if you have them. [/quote]

I can talk from both the pianist and tech view. If I play on wendl lung or feurich I can not compare it with Petrof. To me chinese pianos lack of sound richness and magic, theye are simply boring. And I do not see that will change in the next decade, maybe never. Because, one cannot simply override centuries of tradition and the fact that the piano sound grew with the music and culture, side by side. Chinese are good in copying things, but if one does not understand why he is doing things, I dont belive he can do things well. I was once at the piano masterclass where we had a discussion about the future of piano playing. The conclusion was that one of the first problems is that we have every day less and less good pianos. The idea of piano sound is rapidly changing, to worse not better. We are in the position that the piano sound will not be in our hands, but in hands of people who live our culture for less than a half of the century. Sad...
Regarding quallity, I can talk about young chang, feurich or wendl loung. Bad quality, we have theme here in several music schools, so theye are under haevy regime, uncomparable with any europeans, too much problems, they are pianos that are suposed to last maybe some 10 years, I would like to see them after 50 or more years. I had similar dilema as you have. I bought Bechstein B from 1910. Totally rebuildt for less than 13000 eur. Maybe you schould go for that solution? Why new piano?
[/quote]

You know what Mariotto ? that begun with the Yamaha piano, a good colleague of mine that hated their tone slowly get used to them, and now he is not reminding how a German piano may sound like (he trained in the Langlau factory for one year BTW)

Now the audience have been used to the Yamaha sound which is yet less deep and mysterious than many of the older prestigious brands (who loose some of their characteristics with time, too)

A friend of mine (Baudry pianos) have a "collection of Steinway and Bechstain ranging from 1910 to 1980 or so most in original condition (he rebuild or repair on a case by case basis) A visit in his place is interesting as you can play the same model from differnt eras, the tone get cleaner and cleaner, at some point you begin to regret the tone full of defects of the old one

piano wire now .. I have seen lately a vertical piano in ahouse at 50 meters from the beach in Normandy. After 3 winters there, no rust on the strings (the piano spend yet 5 years in an unheated garage beforethen) I doubt actual wire will stand that (it is a 40 years old Grunert).

I thought that Roslau piano wire was ruled by some DIN norm, but nope, they have their own criterias (BS and resistance to deformation by hammering mostly)

Not bad indeed, but Poehlmann was so much better ...

You know what Mariotto ? that begun with the Yamaha piano, a good colleague of mine that hated their tone slowly get used to them, and now he is not reminding how a German piano may sound like (he trained in the Langlau factory for one year BTW)

Now the audience have been used to the Yamaha sound which is yet less deep and mysterious than many of the older prestigious brands (who loose some of their characteristics with time, too)

A friend of mine (Baudry pianos) have a "collection of Steinway and Bechstain ranging from 1910 to 1980 or so most in original condition (he rebuild or repair on a case by case basis) A visit in his place is interesting as you can play the same model from differnt eras, the tone get cleaner and cleaner, at some point you begin to regret the tone full of defects of the old one

piano wire now .. I have seen lately a vertical piano in ahouse at 50 meters from the beach in Normandy. After 3 winters there, no rust on the strings (the piano spend yet 5 years in an unheated garage beforethen) I doubt actual wire will stand that (it is a 40 years old Grunert).

I thought that Roslau piano wire was ruled by some DIN norm, but nope, they have their own criterias (BS and resistance to deformation by hammering mostly)

Not bad indeed, but Poehlmann was so much better ...


[/quote]
I agree on Yamaha, never liked their sound. But, I am sad that I am in the situation where I say to the people who want to by a new piano, that over the chinese pianos, Yamaha is far more better, so many of them chose Yamahas. I have a friend of mine, my ex teacher who has about 20 pianos, mostly Bechsteins, and some other pianos from 1845. onewards, mostly in original conditions. One learns to appreciate that sound and can see how the things got worse with time. But not only the asia producers are "guilty". The problem is in our culture that is not living the same music life and life in general as it used to. Simply, we are civilisation that is every day more superficcial, so is also the piano tone, with every day less and less rich, as the world uniforms itself in the globalised superficiallity, so every other human activity goes with it...

EVERYTHING that Mariotto is saying trying to justify how the Chinese pianos are inferior is EXACTLY the same argument that people used to say about Japanese products.

But you know what? The Japanese just ignored it as they kept improving their products and eventually started beating everybody else out with respects to quality and price.

The Chinese are apparently doing the same thing right now with many of their piano brands.

There will always be those that continue to put them down long after they've proven to everybody else that their products are very very good, especially for the price that they are asking. (However those prices are rising).

I have had a few techs look over my Hailun for the few years I've had it and every one of them was rather surprised with the build quality and sound.
Even the one tech that had STRENUOUSLY recommended to me to NOT buy anything Chinese because they were "junk" had to begrudgingly admit that it was a nice piano. (It turned out that he had never even worked on or played one before yet he was trying to scare everybody away from them).

The bottom line is this...there simply was NOT a comparable (non-Chinese) piano to my Hailun 198 unless I was willing to spend about three times what I spent.

you just are from another generation and location, with a different cultural environment, so I am unsure you can understand what we are talking about. It does not matter, it was good to me to read some people kept some inclination to a certain type of tone.

The Japanese copied the German at one era, the Chinese are doing so at another one, (they dont only copy,they use the piano builders whenever possible ,the situation is different and the end result is certainly different). For sure the Chinese will not stop ! and they have a huge internal market. And possibly a better desire to get a more European tone, but in the process cheap material tend to be used so the low budget people can buy.