Mine also requires more effort and more of a gentle touch as the range goes up. It doesn't seem to take an excessive effort to hold the pedal down once it goes down though. I think some hydrostatic pedals do it by wire (the pedal does nothing more than send an input to a computer controlled servo) while the Branson is strictly mechanical engagement through force on the pedal. (That pedal by wire is an assumption on my part). I drove a JD compact a while back that definitely didn't feel like the pedals were directly engaging the hydrostat. You could wildly stomp on the JD's pedal and it still rather gently engaged. You sure can't do that on a Branson or any other older hydrostat.
In any case, the Branson Hydrostat takes a little more getting used to, and isn't really a problem at all once you do. In Branson's favor is it has less computer controlled idiot-proofing features that could be difficult to fix when and if they fail.
