Some time back I offered my stash of 88 note player pianos to the group
for $100.00 each [000914 MMD].  I spent at least $120 to move each one
each time.

I am very disappointed in the response.  I got twenty or thirty calls
or emails.  However, all but two of these were wanting something
besides 88-note players.  Several of you wanted one of my five pipe
organs (but not enough to buy one).

Several wanted push up players, but not enough to purchase them
restored, which is how mine are offered.  Several wanted one of four
Angelus Melodants (which are $100), but there again, I still have them
and no one is actually showing interest in them.

I want to know what is wrong with 88-note players?  These are where
all restorers must start.  If we are beginning our restoration careers
with reproducers or original orchestrions, then we are inflicting
unnecessary damage to some VERY expensive and rare machines that cannot
be replaced.

If that is what you are planning, don't do it!  Get two or three
88-note players and restore those.  By so doing you will find out what
all is necessary to make these things work, but most importantly, when
you get all 20,000 parts disassembled and strewn all around the shop or
home, and then you abandon the project as too big, or you just lose
interest, you will not have destroyed a rare and important part of our
musical history.

How many of us have had to collect screws and parts in bins and boxes
to get one of these such projects back together after some novice
dumped it on you, retired, moved to the nursing home, or just went on
to the next thing?  Well, I certainly have.  And usually it has been in
pieces for twenty years.

If you have an intention to be a restorer, get several 88-note pianos
and restore them.  Give them to family or sell them in the local paper
once they are done.  They will give you the absolutely necessary
experience to restore the more complex instruments that are far more
rare if you make it to a status as a restorer who can finish whole
instruments.

Thank you to the two MMD people who drove in Saturday, from Memphis
and Chicago, to pick up two of my best players.  They were both fully
playable manually, with good ivory, fairly well in tune, and with
clean, untouched player systems.  I still have plenty for you to
restore as your first instruments.  They will remain $100.00 until
I move them later this week.

This offer will _not_ be repeated.

D. L. Bullock    Piano World    St. Louis