I can understand some of the realities which underlie John Tuttle's
concerns over the relative longevities of solenoid player systems.
He is correct that there have been more than a few instances wherein at
least two manufacturers discontinued repair parts for earlier versions
of their systems.  Those who purchased those units have no alternative
other than scrapping the entire obsolete unit.

Over the past 35 years, I have owned both pneumatic and electronically
controlled automatic musical instruments.  None of the two Aeolian-Hammond
Player Organs (manufactured in 1938-40) worked pneumatically when I
bought them.  Of course, the Hammond Organ portions worked pretty well
except for their original DR-20 tone cabinets which required speaker
re-coning and wholesale replacement of all of their original wax
capacitors.  The pneumatic rebuilding of one of those units was pretty
expensive in 1971.

Most knowledgeable leather experts give such materials a useful life
of about 25 years depending upon how much use they get and how much
sulfurous acid there is in the ambient air.  I recently disassembled an
Aeolian Orchestrelle trumpet chest and found 90-year old pouch leather
in like-new condition.  I think it is the exception.

I have yet to encounter even one Pianocorder System which wasn't
totally refurbishable in less than three hours at a tiny fraction of
the cost of restoring even the most restoration-friendly pneumatic
player piano.

John Tuttle is correct that replacing printed circuit boards and custom
tape decks can run into some formidable money, especially when spiders
have been living amongst the high-voltage output transistors and the
winter humidification has been adequate.

Even then, the cost of new components is still a small fraction of the
cost of a pneumatic restoration, and their replacement takes far, far
less time than rebuilding a pneumatic stack and the valves, recovering
the pedal pneumatics, retubing the tracker bar and so on and on.

I do not believe that transistors age or wear out.  Some types of
capacitor do fail over time.  I do not know the projected life spans of
modern Mylar or ceramic capacitors.  I would expect them to last longer
than 25 years however.

Over the past 24 years, I have encountered only one Pianocorder System
which wore out its Teflon-coated plungers, and then it was only a
minority of them.  Because all of these parts are readily available,
it was a simple matter to install new plungers.

I have encountered a large number of original Pianocorder System
tape decks which became inoperative by virtue of a shearing-off of
the plastic anchor which provided both the tape deck clamp-spring and
pinch roller spring with tension.

Also a significant number of tape decks' key bails became inoperative
because of dried grease.  However, both conditions are readily repaired
and the units will continue to perform until playback head wear makes
the head-gap too large.

Our instructors at the 1992 Yamaha Disklavier Service Seminar
acknowledged that most of their service calls were due to floppy-disk
drive problems (including unsupervised children lathering peanut butter
into the disk drive).

Since the average factory-laborer's wage was about $0.37/hour at the
height of the player piano, until some enterprising aficionado sets up
a pneumatic restoration facility in Guangzhou, thorough restorations
of pneumatic pianos will remain very costly.  Of course, if the U.S.
economy continues to slide, then we might see community colleges offer
courses in player piano restoration to eager students.  I hope things
don't get that bad.

There is one historical fact that suggests that electronic player
systems might have an edge in longevity.  Q. David Bowers estimated
that 10% of all electrically-operated Mills Violano-Virtuosos still
exist out of an original total of 4,000 made by Mills Novelty Company
because the solenoid-operated pianos continued to function years after
the electrically-bowed violins pooped out.  The owners were reluctant
to junk those Violanos which continued to operate, even partially.
If more pneumatic player pianos had had that kind of longevity, maybe
more of them would've survived.

Regards,
Bob Baker