One of the nicest things about joining this group was the fact that if I
was going to contribute I would have to start getting organized... not an
easy proposition for someone who has been hauling home "stuff" for the last
44 years.  Don Teach swears that when he met me twenty years ago I had a
"ton" of parts.  Well despite four floods, six moves, and the ravages of
time... it is closer to a ton and a half now.

Late at night when things are quiet, I go to the archives section of the
MMD and read, and read, and read.  I noticed somewhere there was a
discussion of tuning pianos.  The Nyles-Bryant School of Piano Tuning was
mentioned.  It rang a bell.  An hour later I found what I was looking
for... the complete Nyles-Bryant course... the 1905 version!  It was in a
bunch of "stuff" that came with a piano tuning business I bought in the
seventies.  The tuner, J. L. "Mack" Hilton was one of those walking
encyclopedias of knowledge.  He had maintained all the automatic
instruments in the theaters in San Antonio, orchestrions, photoplayers, and
we had a bunch.  He knew the model number of everyone of them... including
"those with the German roll changers, you know the ones Wurlitzer got from
Germany".  He had the specifications for every theater organ in town... he
had kept them all going.  He took the Nyles-Bryant course in 1910 and came
to San Antonio in 1911 from Oklahoma where he had worked for the Automatic
Music Company, the forerunner of the Link Piano Company.

He allowed that most of those pianos were located in "sporting houses" only
he used another name.  I asked him about them, but all he would tell me was
that they had an endless roll in a bin in the front under the keybed and a
mandolin... "and not a bar with metal clips on it either... a mandolin."
That was all he could remember.  When I found the Nyles Bryant Course I
also found another piano tuning course which explains how to do the whole
process in thirds!  It was typed on the back of some stationary... and when
I turned the stationary over,  there was a picture of those pianos with
mandolins.  How they worked... I do not know, but you can see the letter
head on my site.  I have it under the new things on the first page.  The
photo is not too good, but if you look behind the beveled glass in the top
you will see a bar... that was the mandolin.  Bowers has a picture on page
482 which shows the "Reliable", but it does not show a mandolin.  Dave
mentions it in the text.

The Nyles-Bryant course that I have is all hand typed... with little
pictures pasted in.  Whether this was original or not, I cannot tell.  The
other course is titled, "A Practical Application of the Art of Piano
Tuning" by J.H. Bell.  If any of you are interested, it runs nine pages. If
I get enough requests,   I may have it duplicated and send it out for the
cost of duplication and postage.  All the illustrations are drawn in
ink... with a nib pen.

Ed