John Dewey asked about the Ampico A with no expression.  I suspect
that your previous restorer used PPCo purple cloth (or any PPCo cloth)
and everything using that will need to be recovered.  He probably did
not recover valves, so you will have to do that too.

If you put a small spring clamp or rubber band to collapse the spring
pneumatic on both expression boxes, you can see how loud the stack will
play and measure the pressure at the stack.  If it is only mezzo-forte
or lower, you have a complete restoration you are looking at.

If the stack looses steam in the middle of a long arpeggio but has
plenty at the beginning and end of it, then your valves are too widely
gapped.  If they are original then you can't leave them alone.  They
have to be rebuilt.

D.L. Bullock    St. Louis
www.thepianoworld.com