I have just finished restoring a Seeburg E, with xylophone.  For those
of you who are old time MBS members, I bought it from Eddie Fryer many
years ago, when he lived in Flemington NJ.  It played up a storm until
five years ago when it became restoration time once again.

Restoration was long, thorough, basically uneventful, and turned out
very well, except (ah, yes, there is always an "except"), I am having
trouble with the last octave.  On many of the late models, Seeburg
connected the last octave to really play two octaves.  So when one hole
crosses the tracker bar the piano really will play two notes, i.e.: 
A and the A in the next octave up, etc.

My problem is, that on all other notes, the piano plays super, but
when it hits this last octave it is weak, or won't play them at all.
In testing, I pulled the small five inch lengths of tubing off note by
note, between the key bed tubes and the stack.  When I pull off the
keybed-stack tube the notes play very strongly, leading me to suspect
that I have an air flow problem between tracker bar and keybed.  I
checked for kinked lines, and airflow freedom -- all okay.  The stack
is performing great, and is firing off both notes at once with no
problem.  This leaves me with a suspicion that something is up with
the bleeds.

Other than carefully cleaning the bleeds during restoration, nothing
was done to them.  History showed us that the piano played excellently
prior to its old age agonies.  A restoration was done by someone in
1964, as I found notes to that effect during my restoration.  When I
did the stack, I believe that the pouches were all original.  When the
1964 restoration was done, I think it was just only the pneumatics and
what ever else was obviously bad.

Okay, here is my theory:  As time went on after the 1964 restoration
the pouches may have started to leak a bit.  Rather than do a total rip
apart, the simple quick fix was to toss in a slightly larger bleed to
compensate for the leak.  Now I come along with nice new non-leaking
pouches and Wham-O, the tracker bar cannot admit enough air to
overwhelm the bleed vacuum.  This would give us weak or non-playing
notes.  Going along with this theory is the fact that the notes play
just fine when I pull the short connecting tube off just below the
stack.  This of course would admit a bunch more air, and ignore the
larger bleeds.

On all notes, except the last octave, the bleeds are drill #58.  In
the notes of the last octave I find _two_ different bleed sizes used.
On some of the notes I find bleeds with a #56 drill hole, and on others
I find a #55 drill hole.

At last I come to my question for the MMD's:  Does anyone know what
bleeds were original to the last octave of the Seeburg E?  If you have
encountered this problem what did you do?  And/or do you have another
suggestion or theory as to what is up.

Thanks for your help.

Charles Hildebrant,  Oldwick, New Jersey