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MMD > Archives > November 2007 > 2007.11.05 > 07Prev  Next


Removing Piano Action from Duo-Art Grand Piano
By Eliyahu Shahar

Dear M. Grady,  A lot has been written about this subject; I'm just
going over the basic steps for a refresher.  The Duo-art system is
delightful, but removing it from the piano is a major hassle.
Photograph everything to make sure it's set correctly afterwards.

The first thing that you will have to do is to identify how the tubing
runs in your piano.  Duo-Art made very few changes to their pianos, but
the one thing that was modified was how they brought the tubing to the
stack from the tracker bar.  You will either have tubes running between
the keys or routed down the side of the piano action.  The majority of
them run through the keys and, while a nuisance, it's not that difficult
to deal with.

To remove the piano action you first need to unscrew all the connectors
that run underneath the keyboard (a lot of screws in this task).  On the
right side of the piano you'll need to disconnect the tube that connects
to the roll motor, and there are two rods that control the Tempo and
Play/Rewind transmission; disconnect them at the sides of the piano.

On the far left side is a block of tubing of about twelve tubes.
Unscrew it from the piano case and then unscrew the blocks to separate
them (taking it from the piano case first, to spare unnecessarily
scratching the case.)  Next unscrew the roll motor and remove it from
the piano case.

Now that the top action of the Duo-Art is disconnected, you can slide
the piano action out as you would in any grand piano.  To remove the
top action from the keyboard mechanism, there are several screws that
hold it down and the soft pedal to disconnect plus 80 tubes that go
through the keyboard.

Have fun with this -- you will have even more fun putting it back in
place as they are easy to mix up.  You'll want a tubing diagram for
this task.  You can find an excellent one in Art Reblitz's book on
restoring the player piano, but it's a real eye chart so you may wish
to scan it and print it on a larger piece of paper.

If you have a later model Duo-Art then the tubing is disconnected from
the sides and doesn't go through the tracker bar -- a lot easier to
remove the piano action and a lot less headache to reinstall.

Best regards,
Eliyahu Shahar


(Message sent Mon 5 Nov 2007, 07:51:50 GMT, from time zone GMT+0200.)

Key Words in Subject:  Action, Duo-Art, Grand, Piano, Removing

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