Ease of Player Restoration
By Rocci Cirone
Hello, MMDers!
Recently, Brett Mohr has asked about Simplex valve restoration, and got many helpful hints/suggestions, along with a comment from Craig Brougher that "...you picked a real 'doozy' for your first player job."
Reading all these Simplex steam/heat/water techniques and caveats, and being in the market for my 1st player piano, I'm wondering which common player actions are considered "easy" (or at least "not difficult" :-) ). I've started reading Reblitz (skipping around), and which actions are "not difficult" havn't really jumped out at me.
I'm now armed (thanks to Bob C.!) with some action identification info, and I've figured out to stay away from a Gulbransen (sp?). From Craig B's comment, perhaps I'd better stay away from a Simplex too, or is that as easy as it gets? Are actions with unit valves like the Simplex and Amphion typically harder to redo than an action with a pouch board? (Or am I getting some of my info garbled being a book-learned novice at this?)
So I'm shopping for a local player with a nicely styled, good piano, and an action that is not difficult to restore.
I've figured out that ANY piano I get WILL need the pneumatics restored, whether the action is working or not, so I might as well not spend $1500 on a piano that the owner thinks is "working like new" just because it can play a roll and hit notes by itself; I'll get the better value for my money by buying one that is clearly "broken" from the owner's perspective, for a lot less $$- it will require exactly the same action resto work. Thanks to Bob, I now know that so far, I've seen pianos with these actions: Artemis, Starr or Aeolian, Standard, and Amphion.
After some reading, I guess I don't want the Artemis as I've read it is poorly engineered and a poor performer. For various reasons, the pianos I've seen weren't the one for me, except perhaps for the one with the Amphion, which I'm still considering. One of my concerns is that the unit valves on the Amphion action may be in the "hard" category, but I don't know, which is why I'm asking the collective wisdom of this list. The Amphion has brass tubes coming out of the tracker bar; are these going to make the restoration a lot harder (like, are the tubes all one piece jobs from the tracker into the valve, and have to be broken out of the glued wood block or is there a rubber connection joint in there somewhere that I can't yet see?) The restoration books I've seen so far haven't had that little detail in it.
Since I have the floor (screen?), I might as well ask some specific questions about the piano I'm looking at now (applies to some others I've seen, too):
-if a hammer refelting is necessary, roughly how much would this
cost? Is this a hundred dollar job or a 400 dollar job?
-if some ivories are off the keys, can they just be glued back on,
or does the whole ivory set have to be replaced? (again, about
how much for a reivory job?)
-is some plating worn off the tracker bar something to be concerned
with? Can it be used just as well without replating/replacing?
The bar is smooth, but some plating is worn off the lower part.
This is the oldest piano I've seen yet (1917- man, that All About
Pianos site has been very very helpful to me!), and has probably
seen the most use, but is also the best preserved fixer-upper I've
seen in many aspects.
Any help/advice much appreciated!
---
Rick Inzero
Northern Telecom, Inc.
Rochester, NY rdi@cci.com |
(Message sent Wed 16 Oct 1996, 16:59:24 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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