Hi all.  Ian has a problem with the tubing on the Ampico A shut-off
system.  I am not the expert but I have had some dealings with a piano
that another person had done some modifications.

The problem had to do with the stack cut-out valve in the pump was
making a horrendous noise when the roll was rewinding.  When Ian gets
his piano tubed similar to the diagrams, he could still have problems.

There are different types of tubing configurations that may not work
with all of the components that you have in the player.   If my memory
isn't too bad, I believe one of the differences has to do with the
stack cut-off valve.  Some have bleeds and others don't.  Some thing
else that was missing on this piano is the small bleed cup that is
inserted in the middle of one of the lines in the right side of the
drawer.  This bleed must be in place.

Something else that caused me problems was the tempo regulator box.
There is a pouch valve that increases the rewind speed of the motor.
The pouch leather was old and leaking very badly.  This leaking caused
some of the unregulated vacuum to be added to the control lines, which
added to my problems.

With the leaky leather problems and the valve bleed in the cut-off
valve, the lines that went to these components would feed more vacuum
into the control lines and the cut-out valve would just oscillate.

After fixing all of the components and sealing over the bleed cup in
the cut-out block, the entire rewind/replay/stop system worked
flawlessly.

Pete Knobloch (Tempe Arizona, USA)