Player Piano Ad
By Colin Hinz
Here's an ad I spotted in today's paper:
PIANO Newcombe, 1920. Player parts complete but needs
work. $1200/best offer.
I haven't contacted the vendor yet, and I'm wondering if this woulld be suitable as my first player. I confess I'm still a bit of a newbie with respect to automatic musical instruments, but I've read accounts which state that an 88-note player is definitely the best thing as a first project. I only have space in the house for *one* instrument...should it be a presently dysfunctional one? Hmmm...
Any advice what I should ask when I call? From the phone number, I gauge that it would take a considerable amount of time (~ 2 hrs each way) or considerable cost ( >$40 each way) to travel to the instrument. This means I'm not interested in making the trip on a whim.
My knowledge of player piano innards comes chiefly from Q. David Bowers' writings, as well as the restoration book published by Vestal in the late 1960's [brain spasm! the author's name escapes me at the moment. Larry somebody-or-another? Givens? No, probably not. Arrrrr.]. Of course, there's also all the info I've archived from this list! I've had Reblitz's player restoration book on order for a lot longer than I want to contemplate, though I've had his non-player piano book for a few years already. I've read some of Ord-Hume's books but I dislike his styls of organising information. Consequently I haven't learned much from them.
Any comments on Newcombe? I've never heard of 'em before. Thoughts on the price? Those are Canadian dollars, BTW, which works out to about US$850. FWIW, older generic uprights sell in this part of the world for CAN$600-$900.
Sorry for being so long-winded about such newbie stuff...
- Colin Hinz
asfi@interlog.com
[ Editor's Note: Colin, I'm sorry this message took so long to get
[ out to the subscribers. I hope that the responses you get are in
[ time to be useful. Jody
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(Message sent Fri 19 Jul 1996, 21:01:11 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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