Introduction
By Darrell Clarke
G'day all you digestees out there! Allow me to introduce myself:
My name is Darrell Clarke, I am 50 something, married, 2 daughters, living in Adelaide (pop. > 1M), South Australia, working in communications. My interests include: listening to music (I can't play anything), collecting and restoring early technology and bush walking. "Early technology" covers a very wide range, but I have particular interests in player pianos, prewar radio sets and clocks. Unfortunately, the rest of the family do not share these interests to any extent.
I have restored, to varying degrees, a number of player pianos, including a Foster Marque AMPICO upright and a Stroud Duo-Art upright (1914). At present, I have a Steck 5' 6" Duo-Art grand (1921), the Stroud and a Waldemar Vorsetzer (Berlin, yet to be restored). I am under orders to sell the Stroud, which is the best playing of my instruments. :-(
I purchased the Steck at auction (no comebacks), having first run a test roll to confirm that it at least sort of played and noting that it had been restored previously. Now that I have had a chance to check it out, fixing the odd leak and making a few adjustments have not brought it up to performance it should have. It plays many rolls OK, but runs out of air all too quickly and will not regulate properly. A test of the pump showed similar suction under load to the Stroud and the stack is not at all tight. It looks like a rebuild job coming up. :-(
I am interested in the conversion of reproducing rolls to other formats (eg MIDI ) and I am very pleased to see so much activity in this area, particularly in view of the scarcity of the real thing in this country. I do not have the time or resources to do it myself at this stage, but I would be keen to try it later.
In the mean time, I would be interested in locating sources of re-cut or old original D-A rolls. I note that QRS no longer list them. What about PlayRite etc? Can anyone give me an update on the current situation? I appreciate that this has probably been covered before.
Cheers,
Darrell
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(Message sent Fri 10 May 1996, 20:25:00 GMT, from time zone GMT-0600.) |
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