I think if people are fed up with answering questions, they're in no
state to answer them properly so it's quite right they should retire
from that business.

I'm also aware we are living in an era when the original pneumatic
player-pianos are melting in their _hundreds_ into the ground.  When
the short-lived Autoplayer Co player renovation shop in Slough, 20
miles west of London, was active, its proprietor Paul Young said he
used to get five calls a _week_ from owners of Weber or Steck "half"-
Duo-Art uprights, asking about value or renovation or rolls, in the
Thames Valley alone.  On this basis he calculated that there must be
about 5,000 of this one kind of player surviving in that fairly
well-heeled bit of England alone.

Twenty years later, we can be sure that a good half of those pianos
have now been gutted, on the expert advice of tuners and dealers, on
good economic grounds that anyone can check.  The others will split
into: barely playing: fossilized: perhaps a few restored slowly by new
owners.  Only a microscopical number can have been handled by profes-
sional player restorers, because there are only a microscopical number
of those.

If we care about saving player pianos, not in perfect order but at all,
the power is with the amateur restorer, working in concert with the
professional straight piano technician.  Freely available information
and lively discussion is the name of the game.

Incidentally, I have been involved with players since 1938 and can
dredge from my mind many of the wrinkles that have been told me by
restorers and related on MMD.  I know most of it.  But knowing isn't
being able to do.  I can name many amateurs who can do professional
quality work, but I'm not one of them and once reclothed a bottom unit
to prove it.  Ugh !

If I want a decent job done, I go to a professional.  As it happens,
the action of my (straight) Bechstein grand is with David Dibley of The
Pianola Shop in Brighton for restoration as I write this and it will
cost me more than two of his unrestored Duo-Art uprights.

Dan Wilson, London