In 1978, I restored a Steinway Duo-Art Grand XR for an individual who
lives near a river.  Frankly, I did a great job and used what, at the
time, I believed were excellent materials, all of which I purchased
from the Player Piano Company.

Specifically, I used Bilon on the stack pneumatics, black neoprene
tubing from the tracker bar to the upper junction blocks, the same
from the lower junction blocks to the stack, the red "shiny" nylon
rubberized cloth for the Wind motor, tracker pneumatic, re-wind repeat
pneumatic, expression regulators, modular, loud pedal, etc, and all of
what I thought were the best glues, etc.

When I finished rebuilding the piano, it operated beautifully.  As
a point of information, two years earlier, in 1976, I rebuilt my own
Steinway Duo-Art XR grand with the exact same materials, and today,
the piano plays just as beautifully as it did 26 years ago.

In any event, I received a call from this individual few weeks ago.
He told me that the piano was having some operational problems and
asked me if I would look at it.  When I saw it, I was shocked at what
had happened to some of the components.  I found that the tubing from
the stack to the junction blocks was completely brittle and would crack
and fall off if merely touched.

More disturbing, I found what appeared to be white patches all over the
components that I had so meticulously spray painted flat black 24 years
earlier.  I wondered whether this was "mold" of some kind.  Again, I
had used the same exact materials on my own piano, and have had no such
problems.

He then told me that he believed he had taken great care of the piano
because he had a humidifier next to it, and apparently kept it on
almost constantly.  With that, his wife told me that she felt he kept
it on too much.  I then opened up the back of the stack to look at the
pneumatics (this was an 80 note stack).  Thankfully, the Bilon was
still in great shape, but I also found what appeared to be this white
mold like substance on the pneumatics as well.

Then I examined the larger pneumatics covered with the red nylon rubber
cloth (such as the re-wind repeat pneumatic).  I was shocked to see
that with some of them, the cloth had become almost brittle to the
point that the crease lines looked as if they were about to tear.
Again, I had used the same cloth on my own piano and it is still in
excellent shape.

The bottom line is that he asked me to make the necessary repairs to
get the piano working again.  Even though he is willing to pay a fair
price, I really didn't want to do the job (in view of the mold, etc.),
but I reluctantly agreed to do so.  I spent a few hours today removing
all of the Duo-Art components so that I could examine each one
individually and evaluate what is going on.

One of my questions though, is very simply this: Do I assume that the
materials I used in rebuilding this piano were defective (even though
the same materials are in perfect shape in my piano -- and two years
older), or do I simply assume that the humidifier did this damage?

And my second question is: Where do I go and who can I trust to give me
the finest materials so if the humidifier was not the culprit, I do not
have to go through something like this again.

I would appreciate any thoughts that any of you have out there and look
forward to any suggestions which might be made.  I really want to
restore this piano to the excellent state it was in when I rebuilt it
24 years ago and I want to obtain the best materials available.

Thanks for listening.

Barry Dennis