I have a customer with a Marshall & Wendell upright piano with an
Ampico player, serial no. 103847 (this would put it about 1924).  The
player is just like the one in the Ampico Inspectors Reference Book
copyright 1923.  The piano had been rebuilt by someone else several
years ago.

His initial complaint was that there was an air leak.  When I got there
the piano was wanting to go into re-roll all the time.  I traced the
re-roll problem to a leak at the repeat pouch.  Tightening the screws
on this solved that problem.  I also tightened the screws on several of
the other expression units.

The problem now is that he says the piano does not play loud enough.
When I ran the Ampico test roll all the notes play but there does not
seem to be any variation in the volume during the expression tests.
The modify lever doesn't seem to make any difference in volume with the
Ampico lever either in the on or off position.  On the maximum playing
capacity test the stack runs out of air fairly quickly.

The roll drive motor seems to have plenty of air so I doubt if this
is a pump problem.  The intensity valves and the cancel valve on the
expression unit go up and down as they should when called for by the
roll.

Since I have not worked on this piano before and it has been a few
years since I did rebuild a couple of Ampico grands, I would appreciate
any suggestions about where to look.  The piano is 90 miles away so
I would like to solve this in one more trip.

John Dewey