Much has been said and written about Player Piano Company (PPCo).
I will miss them for the few items I bought from them.  I have talked
with some of my restorer friends with the conclusion that none of us
were really buying much more than tubing and some cloth from them.

I have been in close contact with three of the potential buyers of
PPCo.  I have 900 pictures of the company taken just a week ago.
I have been to the building several years ago and at one time a player
piano lover would think he was in heaven.  The fact is that business at
Player Piano Co. had slowed to the point that they needed to be open
only a couple of days a week.

I always got along very well with Durrell Armstrong and he sent me
business for nickelodeons as well as leads for me to buy some of them.
Yes, we will all miss him.

The PPCo building is mostly full of worthless (today) pianos and parts.
There are about 79 upright player pianos in the building, with most of
them needing parts such as stacks, tracker bars, etc., as the parts
seem to have been sold off with just a partially gutted piano left.

The building has a broken elevator that now needs major work since the
elevator crashed into the basement on top of the machinery that ran the
elevator.  You cannot just go in and repair it, since the old elevator
is no longer grandfathered in as a historic piece.  The new owners must
replace it with an elevator that meets the building code of 2009, and
that is some major money!  There is virtually no way to bring the pianos
out of the building without an elevator.

I talked with the steel riggers that I work with and they had a few
suggestions but all were costly.  It's likely to cost more to remove
the pianos than they are worth.  These steel riggers I trust to be some
of the best in the world as they travel the world working on oil rigs.
There is only a handful of oil field riggers in the world, with most of
them living in this area.

Since most of the pianos are not going to be worth the effort to remove
them, and the buildings contents were sold with the condition that all
contents have to be removed, that means a real big expense for the
buyer of the building.

The buyer is not a piano person and I wonder what he sees in that
building.  He has told several that there are 500 pianos in that building
as well as old slot machines and pinball machines.  I can tell you that
there are no more than 129 pianos in the building and not a single
pinball or slot machine could anyone find (a crew of six people were
taking pictures and inventory).  If you figure a piano takes 15 square
feet then 500 pianos would need at least 7500 square feet.

The new buyer really doesn't know at this time what he is going to do
with the business or the contents of the building.  There are lots of
parts, new and old, in the building, with some pianos really needing to
be saved but not all of them.  There are 15 or so nickelodeons in the
building with a couple of them being almost complete.

The cast elbows that Durrell once sold were almost depleted as the
foundry that made them for Player Piano Co. closed over a year ago.
A lot of the patterns for casting are left in the building for making
the elbows.  The few restorer friends I have make our own elbows out
of brass tubing instead of using the cast ones.

The one-time giant collection of 10,000 88-note rolls is a shadow of
itself.  The actual rebuilding supplies left in the building leave much
to be desired by a serious rebuilder.  The pump cloth, for example,
was horrible as it was really too thick and had other problems.

The leather that was in the building was really not suitable for good
airtight valve work.  Some of it was a beautiful blue as most of the
leather was bought from a surplus store in Wichita that sold surplus
materials from the airplane upholstery business.  The leather looked
like cutoffs which explains why it was so inconsistent.

There are shelves and shelves of parts from players that I can't
recognize.  There are plenty of great parts and rolls in the building
worth some money but the elevator has to be restored to 2009 building
code by the buyer of the contents.  It is a five-story building.
Anyone in the business knows how much it costs to retrofit a five-story
building with a new elevator in the time frame specified by the seller
of the building.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that the person that bought this
"gold mine" is going to have more of a problem than one can imagine.
I hope someone in the area keeps me posted if they see any activity in
the building.  Personally I would love to be there for the dumpster
diving experience, as that is probably where the best items are going
to end up.

As each day passes the steady customers of Player Piano Company are
finding new sources for their supplies.  All the piano roll recutters
I know were buying end tabs from PPCo and they now have a new source.
I just bought some leather from Columbia Organ Co. and the service
was excellent.  They matched the samples I sent them perfectly.

Don Teach - Shreveport Music Co.
Shreveport, Louisiana
dteach@nwla.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]