This may seem like a bunch of mad ravings but WHY WOULD ANYONE REMOVE THE
PLAYER ACTION FROM RESTORABLE INSTRUMENTS ?????

These piano stores/tuners who do this should be taken out to the wood
shed!!!!  [ ... and spanked.]

I know there people have to make a living but aren't there enough straight
pianos to buy/repair/trade?  Why butcher a valuable automatic piano.
It seems like for every player built there are three or more [incompetent]
tuners who want to remove the player action.  If these people can
understand regulation, restringing, down bearing, etc.,  why can't
they understand basic pneumatic actions ?

I guess I shouldn't tell the group this but once I didn't have time to
tune my player so I made the mistake of calling a local piano tuner to
tune my player.  I had just restrung it three weeks before and I was
getting a little tired of tuning at the time.  He walked over to it and
said, quite with contempt, "Oh, that a old player, you should throw that
out".  So I took his advice I threw HIM out!!  Needless to say I am no
longer accepted by the tuners around here.  All because I have respect
for things as they were made.

Even though there are plenty of players left the numbers are getting
smaller.There is no better feeling for a person to rebuild his/her first
player and hear it play.  My first was a Baldwin.  The story in MMD of
removing a Duo-Art action made my hair stand on end but im glad the
action was saved.

The only replacement stack I know of is from Ragtime Music in Ceres Ca.
But they have no lost motion adjustment and no stop rail.  I traded a
antique truck for one of their kits.  The truck left two weeks ago...
still no kit yet.

The thing is supposed to drive the piano action by inserting nails into
the stickers.  Has anyone used this action and if so how well does it
work.  I have a feeling I will have to use some fingers and stop rail
of a old player action.   It will be a kit with glockenspiels, cymbal,
and drums.  I have never been lucky enough to find a original coin piano,
so I will make a feeble attempt to build one.

I would like to thank MMD and its members.  It provides me with a wealth of
information.  I am not too sharp on computers.  It took me thirty minutes to
figure out how to download the first file!!!

best regards
Andy T