Re: Electrified Pumpers
By Stephen Kent Goodman
To be sure, a purist would want to keep the "pumper" as original as possible. I have spoken to many antique dealers who felt that electrification diminished the value of a pump instrument; in fact, that is how I bought an upright Ampico _cheap_ from a dealer, because she felt it had less value because it had an electric motor in it!
The suction boxes are noisy and tend to overheat unless properly ventilated (even then they get way too hot for what they are intended to accomplish), and they eliminate all but the sustaining pedal from what could be a better piano performance than a reproducing roll. This assumes the pianolist (the person who plays the player piano) has a "good foot for music". The amount of expression that can be added by clever and knowledgeable manipulation of the tempo lever and expression controls (fast/slow pedaling, high/low vacuum, etc.) can create a breathtakingly realistic performance.
A happy medium might be to locate the "Moto-Playola" automatic foot pumping bench contraption seen in Roehl's "Player Piano Treasury", or to get the plans from Player Piano Co. for the construction of a Coinola-type rotary pump. It could be scaled down to the piano's space requirements and placed somehow in the lower section, even if it means removal of one of the two reserve bellows and doubling the spring tension on the single remaining reserve. Of course, responsive expression-type pedaling would be lost, but you would have a motorized pumper that would be much quieter than the suction box method.
Nickelodeon rolls transcribed to 88n only have the sustaining pedal perf going for them -- no soft pedal (the only other expression on "A" rolls), and certainly not the low-vacuum on/off control found on "G" rolls or "O" rolls, et al.
I love my 88n rolls for the reason that, like Berry-Wood and Peerless "O" rolls, they play practically the full keyboard and sound great with the "full orchestra" arrangements, something that even the PianOrchestra with its 61- and 58-note scale can't equal!
Bottom line -- if it makes you happy and is musically satisfying to you, go with it. The sluggish market for so-called "collector pieces" proves that you should buy what you enjoy and _play_ it, and not just keep it around to impress friends or dealers.
Merry Christmas,
Stephen Kent Goodman
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(Message sent Sun 15 Dec 1996, 03:01:15 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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