Careful selection of materials precedes actual production. Specialists from PETROF and our long-standing suppliers travel all over Europe and personally select materials and components that meet our high standards. The most important is obviously high quality wood - especially spruce for the making of the sound board - the heart of PETROF grands and uprights. Wood and other materials make a fundamental contribution to the instrument’s appearance and the resultant tone, and so we take exceptional care in its selection.

The construction of a piano begins from the outset in our own wood-processing plant. We gradually shape the raw wood into the components that after long months of careful manual work turn into a completely new piano.

We use many different types of wood to make a piano, including resonant spruce, beech, birch, walnut, poplar, lime, maple, ebony, alder and others. The selection of specific types of wood for each part of the instrument is not arbitrary, but results from our many years’ experience.

In our long decades of instrument making we have hardly changed the types of wood we use. Years of research and development have enabled us to determine which particular woods are most suitable for our purposes. We respect the inheritance of our ancestors and the fundamentals of the pianomaker’s art, and to judge from the positive acclaim of our clients this is the right course.

We at PETROF produce 70% of our parts and components ourselves. This means we have complete control over their quality. Thanks to this, in 2007 we were awarded the European Excellence Certificate which attests the European origin and the highest quality of production materials. Ever since, the EEX seal has appeared on all our instruments.

Our workshops turn out sound boards, pinblocks, keyboards, strings, metal components and many other parts. Exceptionally. some ready-made parts are made by reputable European manufacturers, for example Renner hammers and actions.

A certified supplier from the Czech Republic casts our iron frames to the required shape, which we then grind, drill and varnish into the finished article. We pride ouurselves on their modern design and above all their reliable construction, which together with the piano skeleton must withstand the tension in the strings, which this construction has to bear, can in a grand piano reach over 20 tonnes.

At the beginning of 1994 one of the first anechoic chambers in the Czech Republic was opened on PETROF’s premises for the purpose of research. It is mainly used for acoustic measurement with the aim of achieving perfect sound quality for our instruments. The chamber not only serves for measuring the acoustic properties of grand and upright pianos - we also offer it for hire. If you wish to test whether your products meet with your acoustic parameters, do not hesitate to get in touch.

An integral part of our research activities is the environmental test chambers or “feutrons”. We use them mainly to check quality by conducting environmental tests where attention is focused on the influence of climate on the material properties of wood, surface finishes and the firmness of glued joints. Every material used in making our pianos is subjected to very rigorous quality checks. These are carried out in the feutron, which is capable of exposing them to extreme conditions, simulate stress-inducing levels of temperature and humidity, or speed up the process of aging in materials.

PETROF collaborates closely with a number of specialist institutions, particularly universities and research establishments. Among these are:

The Faculty of Forestry, Zvolen Technical University

Prague Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

SUPŠ Musical Instruments & Furniture, Hradec Králové  

Mendel University, Brno

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