[ Ray Finch wrote in 060520 MMDigest:

> I can just see a whole player with everything covered
> in red and white checkered plastic tablecloth material ...

These lines jarred a frightening memory from my very early days of
rebuilding.  When I was just out of high school, in the mid 1970s,
I was doing stacks (at an appalling rate of $150.00 each) for an elderly
chap in northern Indiana who _really_ did stuff like this.  I shudder
to think of the total lack of taste, aesthetics, and workmanship, and
even more of his uncanny ability to sell these things, for thousands of
dollars, to the nouveau riche trailer barons.

He would take a poor player piano and spray-paint the whole back
plate, pins, strings and all.  He would replace the front panels with
Plexiglas, cover the inner cabinet, spoolframe, and stack with the
most hideous frocked contact paper one can imagine.  Sometimes he
painted or glittered the hammers and action parts.  The exterior cases
were painted in an equally garish fashion.  And yes!  He did one in red
and white checkered plastic tablecloth for a fried chicken joint!

The crowning achievement of his career in "Player Piano Debauchery" was
his "Limited Edition - Bicentennial Pianos".  These were eight Baldwin
and Cable Euphona players which have the striking pneumatics exposed
(which he painted red, white and blue).  Contact paper with flags,
eagles, and other typical Americana was everywhere.  I must not forget
to mention the spotlighted rotating plastic figurines of George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson that were mounted at each end of the
spoolframe base.

He would often tell me of the great legacy he would be leaving.  It was
one thing that really puzzled me.  Did he really believe that he was
engaging in an artistic endeavor, improving the looks of these drab old
players?  Or was he just being a huckster.  His main line was as a
military contractor for machine work (in the realm of $1800.00 toilet
seats) and he often bragged about what he was able to charge the Pentagon
for the most mundane of things.

He passed away of cancer in 1979.  From handling all that glitter glue
and vinyl contact paper, no doubt.  During the three years I worked for
him he cranked out about 30 of these things.  I have yet to hear of any
of them turning up by any of the technicians I know in the area.

Brian Thornton - Short Mountain Music Works
Woodbury, Tennessee
http://www.shortmountainmusic.com/