What no-one has pointed out so far is that we've always known there
were massive reserves of old players, that haven't worked since the
1940s, in people's homes where they held up pot plants or would just
about give a tune when played by hand.

I've mentioned here before the statistic that Paul Young, proprietor
of the Autoplayer shop in Slough (UK) dredged up from the regular phone
calls he got, that at that time (the middle 1970s) there must have been
around 5,000 pedal-only Duo-Art uprights surviving in the Thames Valley
alone.  This was just the area, 10 to 60 miles west of London, where he
advertised for old players.

In the 1970s you could have got them going just by renewing the tubing
and a few pneumatics.  Now, you have to do the whole show, $5,000 or
more for a piano which as a plain restored upright Steck or Weber won't
be worth more than $400.

What we're seeing are these reserves, shaking out into the world after
their owners have died.  This would have happened whatever we did.

I support Douglas Henderson's line because, while I have a massive
jazz roll collection thanks to the recutters, it's well-played
classical music that actually makes anyone take the player seriously
enough to want to own one.  When we (Friends of the Pianola Institute)
did shopping mall demos around 1990, the hot music got people gathering
round the piano, but it was the Chopin and Rachmaninov into the evening
that had people come up and say, "This music can't be coming out of
those little holes, can it?  Why have we never heard about these
machines?"

Maybe I'm biased, but "The Classical Pianola" on TV would buck the
trade up no end.  We're lucky in the UK: nearly all our players have
"theme" accentuation.  I've always wanted to do a presentation on
Hupfeld and their hand-played Animatic (i.e. 88-note Phonola) rolls
-- "The Almost Lost Treasures of Leipzig".  You could make it quite
romantic:

  "In the winter of 1940, Maxwell, Whelpdale & Codd, the British agents
  of Bluethner in Germany who had used Hupfeld actions, had their
  janitor throw Animatic and Triphonola rolls into the central-heating
  furnace for two solid days, without even opening the boxes ..."

Reminiscent of the 1850s when tons of mummies in Egypt were used to
fuel the first locomotives there.

Dan Wilson, London