Hi All,

I just started to work on a P.A Starck player piano that I purchased
this week. The old upright's serial number is 16131.  The Pierce Piano
Atlas indicates the date of manufacture is 1918.  The player action is
I believe a Simplex since the tracker bar has the 'trapezoidal' holes
noted by John Tuttle and Art Reblitz as characteristic of this type of
action.  The tracker bar also has a manual control for transposing the
music being played.  The transposing mechanism simply shifts the whole
tracker bar left and right about what I think is equivalent to a
couple of holes of the tracker bar.  I presume that there must be some
sort of vacuum seal between the observable tracker bar holes and the
'metal hoses' from the back of the spool box going to the key bellow
pneumatics.  I searched the MMD archives and Art Reblitz's Player Piano
book but could not find a diagram of how this tracker bar/transposer
might be constructed.

The piano was in an unheated garage for the last 15 years and will
present some interesting challenges, but my first objective is to see
if I can get the piano to play and  player action to operate and play
rolls.

Mice had moved into the piano and built a considerable nest under the
keys using about half of the paper roll that had been left in the spool
box.(An interesting lesson learned!!)   Cleaning that out by removing
the keys and doing a thorough vacuum job solved the numerous
inoperable/sticky key problems. The piano now can be played.  I then
moved onto the player part and with some temporary judicious use of
'duct tape' on the wind motor, pedal pump, and reservoir bellows, am
getting a substantial amount of vacuum from pumping the pedals.

I used a vacuum cleaner (judiciously) to apply vacuum to the stack and
noted that almost, if not all,  tracker bellows 'lifted'.  So I
concluded that given sufficient vacuum the bellows would actuate the
keys.  Then I connected up all the vacuum hoses and controls and
attempted to play a roll.  I had the front of the piano case off so I
could observe the piano action, especially the hammers.

The wind motor operated the roll sufficiently well for this test, but
the tracker bar did not respond properly. Essentially, as I pumped the
pedals the roll traveled over the tracker bar, but none of the notes
on the roll would play.  In fact, many of the 88 key hammers would
move close to the strings, and stay there,  but would not actually
strike them. Since the tracker bar is connected to the bellows of the
key pneumatics by 'metal hoses', I doubted that the metal tubes were
the cause of the multitudinous leaks.  More likely I suspected that
there may be leaks in the tracker bar/transposer mechanism...  possibly
in a 'vacuum seal' between the tracker bar with the observable holes
and the 'metal hoses' in the spool box.

I'd appreciate any comments/suggestions on how to disassemble/repair/test
the tracker bar/transposer mechanism, or where I might be able to get
that type of info.

Dale C. Houser
dchouser@juno.com.geentroep [ remove .geentroep to reply ]
Springfield, Va.