Today we explored a little, and I investigated the piano store in
East Rochester, New York.  As we were leaving, I showed my daughter the
smokestack, then saw the letters on it and suddenly realized they were
AMPICO.  I grabbed off a shot through the car window as my wife pulled
out of the lot, and when I got home I searched Ampico and Rochester;
finding this discussion thread confirming my guess.

Not much to add to the previous threads, but I thought I'd pass it
along that the magnificent chimney still stands, and seems to be
a sort of ornament to the mall where the factory used to make those
players.  The piano store has at least one player piano and some piano
rolls.  (I noticed QRS rolls, but I'd like to believe there may have
been Ampico rolls as well.)

My dad, Robert Williams, used to teach at Colorado State University
in a studio with a fairly decent Knabe grand that used to have an
expressive action inside.  Possibly an Ampico?  I used to open the
studio door and look at the ends of the tubes that had been neatly
sawed off years before.  I mention his name because he used to see
Art Reblitz once in a while, and I see Mr. Reblitz's name in some of
the comments on the thread I was looking at -- Dad's doing well in
Michigan and visits Colorado every so often.

On the off chance someone here doesn't know about it, Terry Smythe
has scanned thousands of player piano rolls and turned them into MIDI
files.  There's some wonderful stuff in there, and playing them on
VanBasco's free player gives at least a fraction of the joy of watching
a player piano -- for those of us who don't have one or two of them!

Kip Williams
Pittsford, New York

 [ Rick Inzero sent a nice photo of the smokestack, at
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Pictures/ampstack.html  -- Robbie