There are few people that have worked on Ampico Reproducing Pianos that
have not run into the problem of the cracked, warped, or almost
non-existent roll frame casting.  Very few, in this part of the
country, are still usable in instruments that have not been restored.

I have asked some of the old timers through the years whether they
encountered this problem.  As I found out, most of them were not
"restorers" in the sense we use the term today.  Claude Hughes when
queried about rebuilding Ampico valves responded,  "Hell, all we did
was order new ones.  I have no idea what the valve travel was."

I was surprised to learn from all of them, that the roll frames
frequently cracked or warped in new pianos on the showroom floor!  Don
Luis Gallart whose family owned one of the largest music houses in
Havana, told me it was particularly bad in Cuba.  In Mexico City, the
man I bought those escutcheon plates from had his own pattern made for
the frames and they were cast from aluminum.  I still have some of them
he gave me.  They are crude, but they work.

So much for pot metal or die cast.  I am sure there are different
qualities of it, but the Ampico and Mills Violano are two automatic
instruments that I can think of off hand that had major problems with
their castings.

By the way, Claude Hughes told me that all of the technicians in those
days carried Ampico valve blocks with bleeds in them.  "How the hell
were you going to fix one of the primaries that had gone bad?  We just
tubed around the primaries and directly to the valve.  When you had an
out of town service call in those days, you took the train out in the
morning, and were expected to be back at night.  The company did not
pay for hotel rooms on the road."

Claude, by the way, worked well into his eighties for San Antonio Music
Company.  His career ended when he was struck and killed by a police
squad car racing to an emergency as he stood waiting for his bus to
work.  The resulting lawsuit changed the way the police respond to such
calls today.  Claude would have loved that!

Ed Gaida