Richard Vance's description of flaws in the Themodist system doesn't
apply on any of the UK-made instruments I've tried that have been set
up reasonably well, or any of the American-made ones that were not
complicated by also being Duo-Art fitted.  As I said in yesterday's
MMD, the accompaniment regulator is barely operative if the subdue
levers are not touched, so its drawbacks only start to apply as the
levers are pushed over, and if you don't like the effect, you ease off
on the levers.

I've never tinkered with Standard "Solodant" actions, but their
behaviour when switched over to SOLODANT (or TRIUMPHODIST or one
of those other names) fits his description perfectly.  I've always
found them a complete pain, because you either have no theme effect
or too much.

On the one Aeolian push-up that I mentioned, which switched over to
full subduing with half an inch of lever movement, I lost patience with
it fairly rapidly and rigged a string from the bass-subdue lever to the
regulator, and tightened the regulator spring so that normally it didn't
function.

Moving the levers up to the all-or-nothing "subdue" point then resulted
in the bass being subdued and the treble not.  Further movement of the
bass-subdue lever then tended to pull the regulator shut, producing
a graduated accompaniment effect.  With the levers hard over, the
instrument played in the normal "hard-over" way, fully subdued except
for "themed" notes.

Can it be that Aeolian made more of these all-or-nothing theme instru-
ments than we've seen on this side of the water ?  It's beginning to
look like it.

Dan Wilson, London

 [ It's hard to say if there is a "flaw", or if we just want to try
 [ a different approach: namely, to try a pressure-control method
 [ versus the existing flow-control method.  My goal is to have better
 [ control of the expression when I'm pumping the piano; the slide
 [ valves often seem inadequate.  -- Robbie