Hi! This is the first time that I post a request to this group, I hope
that I am using the right address.

My brother and I, are in the process of restoring a Canadian made
player piano and there is something on it that we find a little bit
strange. The tracker bar on it has 102 holes disposed in three groups:
7-88-7, the holes in the first and last groups are round and the ones
in the 88 group are square. It is clear from the tubing connections
that the round holes are meant to be used for tracking adjustment. A
sliding valve insures that only one hole on each side is used at any
one time. Sliding the valve, only changes the pair of holes which is
active. We have bought the book on restoring player pianos by Arthur
Reblitz, but in it no mention is made about such an arrangement. The
questions that we have are: Is anyone familiar with such type of
tracking bar? Is it frequently used? Was it designed to allow to adapt
to different paper width? Can anyone provide us with some information
on how it is supposed to work?

The reason that we are asking these questions is that this mechanism
does not appear to work very well and we would like to know if it is
possible to do something about it? Also in this piano all the 102 tubes
need to slide for tracking and this generate a lot of friction making
good tracking very difficult. We wonder if this could be modified? We
have also noticed the left hand side of the rolls are all chewed up, is
this due to a bad alignment of the rollers and can this be adjusted?
What would be the best way of fixing the rolls? Is using scotch tape a
solution?

We are really new in this game but we find it very interesting.

By the way we have found some hide glue and we have experimented with
it and we are very satisfied with the results except that we don't like
the smell of it when it is hot.

Thank you in advance if some of you out there can answer some of our
questions.

Georges and Claude Vaillancourt