Here are some comments on our experience with various types of cloth
for stack pneumatics.  I have no connection with any supply company and
have no reason to endorse any product except for my interest in high
quality restoration.

 *  Rubber cloth, Schaff or Player Piano Co., circa 1966: Seeburg KT,
Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern, Chicago Heights, Illinois.  I bought the
piano in 1984.  It still played well after 18 years of heavy use in
industrially-polluted air.  It probably had between 50,000 and 100,000
plays.

 *  Blue Polylon, Barden & Clark, 1971: Wurlitzer CX, Colorado Springs
tourist attraction.  We used Polylon because there wasn't any decent
rubber cloth available in 1971.  After 27 years of heavy commercial
use -- hundreds of thousands of plays -- the piano still plays, but
not loudly.

 *  Blue Polylon, Barden & Clark, circa 1971: Duo-Art upright owned by
David Junchen, restored by another shop.  The piano lived in Illinois,
California, and then Illinois again.  It received light to moderate
home use.  By 1984 the Polylon was totally shot.  When we recovered
the pneumatics in 1991, the blue coating was almost gone, as if it had
evaporated into the air, leaving only the flimsy remains of white
nylon.

 *  Red Polylon, Player Piano Co., 1972: Aeolian Pianola pushup piano
player, Colorado Springs tourist attraction.  It has probably had over
200,000 plays since then.  It still plays, but is getting mechanically
rickety and hard to pump.

 *  Red Polylon, Player Piano Co., circa  1972: Hupfeld Pan orchestrion
recovered in California, probably in the mid-1970s.  It arrived in our
shop in the late 1970s.  It had never been played.  The cloth was al-
ready starting to show the same deterioration as the blue Polylon in
the Duo-Art described above.

 *  Black Polylon, Player Piano Co., circa  1977: Seeburg H orchestrion
from Cliff House.  Moderate home use in Wyoming for a few years, and in
Chicago since then.  It still plays well.

 *  Bilon, Player Piano Co., circa 1970s & 1980s.  We used this in
several commercially-used instruments where I thought it would hold up
better than the thinner Polylon.  We also used it on all wind motors
for many years.  I never saw it go bad in actual use.  The last roll on
my shelf became fused together.  When I tried to unroll it, the coating
on one side uniformly came loose and stuck to the coating on the other
side in the roll.  It went into the trash.

 *  Rubber cloth, Player Piano Co., circa  early 1980s.  Craig Brougher
told me that their new supplier at the time, Reeves, made rubber-
coated fabrics for submarine lifeboats, and that their formula for
pneumatic cloth should remain good under all sorts of terrible condi-
tions.  I switched from Polylon back to rubber cloth.  I haven't seen
any of it go bad yet.

 *  Rubber cloth, Player Piano Co., circa  late 1980s.  After Reeves
moved their operation and put different people in charge, the cloth was
unpredictable.  One batch was gray, the next was shiny black, the next
was wrinkled badly, etc.  We stopped using it.

 *  Wine-colored Polylon, American Piano Supply, early 1990s to the
present.  We used it only briefly.  I've never seen it go bad.

 *  Rubber cloth, Felix Trading Company (Australia), sold through
Schaff, Organ Supply and possibly a few other distributors.  We've used
this exclusively since it first came out in the early 1990s and have
never had any trouble with it.  Most of the instruments that we've
restored with this cloth are in the Midwest.


General comments:

 *  Although we've had no problems with the Australian rubber cloth
and motor cloth, the Australian silk Schulz cloth has worn out very
rapidly.

 *  We have always glued Polylon with the nylon side down, using PVC-E
(Player Piano Co.'s "Plastic Glue.").  To my knowledge, none has ever
come loose.  However, numerous other rebuilders have told me that it
has slid off the pneumatics and that they always glue the coated side
down.

 *  Regional air quality and environmental conditions seem to have a
major effect on the longevity of pneumatic cloth, as shown by the two
blue Polylon examples above.  All types of cloth seem to last longer
in our dry Colorado environment than in areas of high humidity.

 *  Extreme dry heat can also ruin rubber cloth.  A customer owns three
instruments in which the pneumatics were covered with the same rubber
cloth, probably in the 1980s.  Two have lived in a moderate climate
with high humidity and are still playing.  The third one spent a few
years in a hot garage in Arizona.  The rubber cloth got baked, and the
rubber turned to a dry powder, requiring recovering.


Our shop specializes in authentic restorations of antique instruments,
so I'm biased toward traditional materials and will always use them
when available supplies appear to be good.  Every type of cloth is a
gamble.  It will all go bad someday.  We won't know when until it
happens.

Art Reblitz
Reblitz Restorations Inc.