Greetings all.  In MMD 991122 Andrew Barrett writes, "... from the
description in Rebuilding the Player Piano, [the Cecilian action] is
a double hernia (triple, even! :-) and is virtually unrestorable."

And Gary Rasmussen writes, "The reason mine never got rebuilt was
because of the pot metal player action. ...  I couldn't get the tabs
holding the valves apart without breaking them."

This is _not_ the player mechanism in Jane Tighe's Farrand-Cecilian,
which dates from 1920.  The player actions to which Andrew and Gary
refer were from the time before Walter Lane acquired the Farrand Piano
Co.  They are called "Farrand Cecilian" actions and not "Bush & Lane
Cecilian" actions.

One of Mr. Lane's first acts upon this acquisition was to redesign the
player actions from the bottom board up.  He and his assistants came up
with what I feel is the tightest pneumatic action ever produced in the
U.S. (and also the heaviest).  It is a single-valve action with
die-cast unit valves, and quite similar in basic principle to Amphion
"right-side-up" valves except that the striking pneumatic is screwed to
the bottom of the valve rather than being glued to a tier board.

These die-cast valves are in three sections, each section gasketed, and
are held together with four machine screws.  No breakable stamped steel
tabs used here!

By at least 1917 this Bush & Lane Cecilian (the spoolbox plate
identifies it as such) was being installed into Bush & Lane, Victor and
Farrand instruments.  The nearly unrestorable "Teakettle Cecilian" --
which was build by Farrand _before_ Bush & Lane acquired that company,
and which is pictured in Art Reblitz' excellent book -- was history.
The Reblitz book makes no mention of the Cecilian built by Bush & Lane.
They are fairly common in the Pacific Northwest but perhaps not in
other areas of the country.

If anyone is interested, I have written about this previously (search
in the MMD archives under Bush & Lane, or Cecilian, or my name) and
there is a picture of the Bush & Lane player action posted in the
archives as well, courtesy of Ed Gaida.  See

  http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/playerActions.html

If you're really a glutton for punishment and your eyes don't glaze
over easily, drop me a note and I'll give you a full description and
some company history.

The company's top of the line instruments bore the Bush & Lane marque.
Next came Victor, and then Farrand.  The major differences were in case
styles and veneer and in scale design.  The quality of all was head and
shoulders above any other upright pianos being built at the time.  They
were very expensive instruments and worth every penny.  There were no
shortcuts taken in the building of them, nor in the scale designs.

Even before Walter Lane's takeover, Farrand had long established itself
as a builder of exceptionally fine pianos, so in the Bush & Lane Piano
Company in the Holland Michigan years we had three of America's greatest
upright pianos and players all built under the direction of one man,
Walter Lane, and one company.

Dean Randall,
the Bush & Lane fanatic.