I am gonna stay out of this one.  Two piano stores here in town have
asked me to go to "school" to learn how to install the various MIDI
systems on the market.  I said "no'.  You have all heard the expression,
"You dance with who brought you" and pneumatics have "brought" me a
long way.  The following true story will kinda sum things up.

For four years the vice-president and general manager of the largest
music store in San Antonio bugged me to re-build his art case Knabe.
I kept saying "no".  Everytime I went  to the store on a service call,
he would ask again.  I had not done a reproducer in a long time... and
I really did not WANT to do another one.

One day, I asked him where the piano was.  "In the concert room".  I
crawled under it, popped the belly cloth, and stared upward.  In my head,
I connected all the tubing...you know...1T, 2T, etc.  When I finished,
I put the belly cloth back on, and went into his office.  "I'll do it...
IF... you do not bug me for a completion date."

Their building is one of those marvelous OLD places with a basement, and
a freight elevator that pops up out of the sidewalk.   When I finally got
around to removing the player the piano was in the basement and the young
lads in the electronics repair department helped me load the Ampico mech
on the elevator.  Both of them are FINE musicians as well as excellent
repairmen.

"What is it?", they asked.    Well for the next 15 minutes they got the
five dollar lecture on reproducing pianos...I mean the history and
everything with "show and tell" using the visuals at hand.  When I
finished, one said, "Oh, like a Pianodisc!"  "Sort of", I answered.

When the Ampico was finished they helped me again lug it into the basement,
and returned to the electronics department to do the things they do SO
well.

When I finished regulating and playing the three rolls that I use to test
an Ampico, and I do not mean the "25 note repetition roll", I asked them to
come in and hear it.

After the second roll, the one who had said, "Oh, like a Pianodisc" looked
at me and said, somewhat bug eyed,  "Wow, a Pianodisc could never do that!"

As they say, "Out of the mouths of babes.."

-30-

Ed