I have been enjoying all of the 'My First Mechanical Musical
Instrument' stories on the MMD lately and thought I would add my own.

My mother was a piano teacher and my dad was a car mechanic, Chevrolet
service manager & wheeler-dealer.  We always had a straight piano in
the house for Mom's teaching.  When I was about 10 years of age, about
1966, one of my dad's deals ended up with an old upright non-working
player piano for us.  I remember it being moved into our basement, the
piano on a dolly on its side; I was intrigued by some strange pedals
hanging out of an opening in the lower portion of the piano.

My dad, being a mechanic at heart, dug into the P.A. Stark piano with
a Simplex action and found that the tubes from the lead tubing to the
transposing tracker bar were gone.  When replaced with aquarium tubing,
as well as automotive radiator and heater hoses for the main stack and
air motor, it worked!  But some of the notes didn't work.  He found
that with a Simplex action, we could just trade the non-working
pneumatic valve units in the center of the scale for those on the ends
that did work.

For the next couple years the piano worked okay in the summer but in
the winter, when it was dry in Minnesota and North Dakota, it wouldn't
work at all without a pan of water in the bottom.  That piano ended up
being a part of many teenage parties in our basement in the 1970's.

As a result of this player piano and other related experiences, when
I was about 12, I tuned my first piano.  By about age 14, I replaced
all of the pneumatic and other bellows cloth on this piano so the
player worked year around.  By age 15, I was earning a good enough
living at tuning, rebuilding, buying and selling pianos and player
pianos that I had more money than all of my teenage friends, and I
ended up being able to pay my way through college.  Now I have a family
with a regular full-time (non-musical) day job, many automatic musical
instruments awaiting restoration, and I wish I had more time for this
hobby.  Someday I plan to!

Gary Rasmussen
Mason, Ohio (Cincinnati area)