Hi again,  I believe that my Ampico is in need of a major overhaul but
at least for the next few months I don't have the time or energy to do
it.  Perhaps when I finish restoring my backlog of musical boxes (but
they grow faster than I finish them).  The other problem is that my
glue pot is in California and the piano and I are in Israel until my
next trip, I can't do much there.

That aside, the piano plays and expresses nicely but it has a problem
to start.  I will describe what happens and how I get it going, perhaps
there is an interim fix that I could give it a few more months before
I get to the big job.

When I turn it on, and the roll is at the very beginning, the wind
motor has power to move it normally until the roll is covering all
the holes.  It then moves to a very slow motion and, if I allowed it
to play, none of the notes work.  It will continue this way for several
minutes (I haven't checked it lately, but it used to "catch" fairly
quickly, now it takes a while).  Eventually I hear a "thup" and it
plays normally and beautifully with no signs of any problems (although
I don't know how well regulated it is).

To get over this problem at first I would press on the treble
expression pneumatic and it would catch immediately.  I don't like
doing this (getting under the piano is difficult, etc.) but I have
discovered that if I advance the roll, put it in rewind and then
quickly to play a couple of times it will start to play normally.

I know that the leather nuts on the expression mechanism are shot,
but they seem to hold if I don't press them too much.  Has anyone
encountered a problem like this and (short of rebuilding the mechanism)
is there something which I need to do to get it working again?

Eliyahu Shahar
Israel