The piano's true rarity rests in its having been so large a Steinway
piano with a Welte mechanism installed. Jim Miller and Ken Caswell,
I believe, worked on the piano and may have installed the additional
Licensee/Green Roll spoolbox with electric roll drive common to both
spoolboxes. Joe Tushinsky sent the piano to Italy or France and had
the heavy encrustation of pseudo-Mediterranean marquetry appended to
its originally plain case. The leg stretchers are missing. It has a
remote pump.
I think the existing mechanism would need major work to be decently
playable, and personally I would strip off all of the changes and look
for or make parts to restore it to its original form, which is rare and
fine enough. With our PowerRoll device, dual spoolboxes are no longer
necessary to play both scales of Welte rolls on one tracker bar, so the
innovation is superfluous in 1998. But it could be put back in
condition as a hybrid, if someone desired.
Larry Broadmoore
|