Howdy MMD Buddies,  I'm an new member interested in Dynavoice players
and my background is handyman/tinkerer, jack-of-some-trades, master
of none.  My next project is putting together a Pianocorder/MC-2 MIDI
system ala Will Dahlgren, Mark Fontana and Bob Baker.  Maybe around
2020 I will upgrade to a Playola.

As my very first player piano acquisition, I purchased a Dynavoice
Vorsetzer unit in mid 1999.  Over the first couple of months I figured
out how to open the glued-together vacuum chambers and rebuild/upgrade
them.  I created a rather simple cheap ($0.50) replacement for the
somewhat complicated original pouch, when I found that to have the
original duplicated would run anywhere from 800 hundred to several
thousand dollars.  Fortunately I had only a few torn pouches.

In the meantime I have tracked down two junker Dynavoices here in
San Francisco (one from Dick Leonard) and so have a surfeit of extra
original pouches and vacuum chambers.  I was lucky enough to have found
an early model Dynavoice that has the two-speed vacuum motor and the
transposing tracker bar, both of which were apparently done away with
on the later models.

Man, that transposing tracker bar is a God-send on old rolls with
severe wandering problems.  I can follow just about any roll all over
the tracker bar and keep the music coming without totally distorting
the roll as would normally happen by forcing the centering system to
handle all the compensation.  I also added a manual assist to the
centering system and added a speed control pedal for the rewind system
which gives complete control of centering when playing, plus eliminates
auto-rewind paper-shredding disasters.

One other fix: the player motor speed is controlled by a 200 ohm
rheostat with a capacitor across it, to which I introduced an
additional 100 ohms as the speed was too fast.  Rolls that required
exceptionally slow speed could not be played correctly until this
fix was added.

If anyone out there has an old Dynavoice stashed away and wants to
restore or unload it for parts, send me a note.  I'm looking for
another early model that has the transposing tracker bar for parts,
for an Internet friend in SC who I've been helping with his Dynavoice
rebuild.  I'm wondering if we are the only two nuts on the planet that
have working Dynavoices?

Re the Pianocorder/MC-2 MIDI system.  Can anyone advise me as to the
whereabouts of Mark Fontana, the genius who had or has a Pianocorder
MIDI web page and shareware available for said system?  The current
addresses I find at MMD for Mark's web page find no connection on my
server (AOL).

I have a couple of feelers out now for used Pianocorder units, but
the more I read on MMD, the more I realize I have a awful lot to learn
before proceeding with the MIDI addition to the system.  I'm hoping
Mark Fontana can provide some basic insight into managing the MC-2 MIDI
files for someone like me who is relatively computer illiterate.

Tom Lear
San Francisco