Clinton Grey asked if spending $500 on a functional Musette player
seemed worthwhile.  In a market where functional players are plentiful,
reasonably easy to come by, and all of that, I'd say "no".  However,
if you've done a diligent search, in an area where functional players
are _not_ plentiful, and this seems to be your best option, then, yes,
go for it.  Plunk down the five hundred bucks and drag the beast home.

It's not going to be a great player piano; it never was, really.  It
was built for folks who wanted a player to be able to play recognizable
tunes, for the keys to go up and down, and very little else.  That
being said, for a "starter piano", for someone interested in getting
into players more and more, I'd say this one's a good choice for a
couple reasons that may not be immediately apparent.

Its going to need work, at some point, sooner rather than later.  The
valves -- plastic "unit valve" versions of the old wooden Amphion or
Ampico valves of 80 years ago -- are failing.  Valve "travel" (the
distance a pneumatic valve moves from "open" to "closed") is critical,
and, between poor quality control during construction, and compression
of materials as they age, the valves are approaching the point where
they'll only work when playing LOUD, or not at all.

The good news is that a guy named Dennis Wilkerson who makes new
versions of these valves, with both higher quality control standards
and better materials, and, with his new valves in place, these little
players can do amazingly well.  With any luck, the striker and
accessory pneumatics won't yet need to be recovered, but if they do,
its really not as big as job as it may seem.

The reason I say that a Musette, or something like it, is a good
starter piano, is because

(1) it plays, right now, perhaps not as nicely as a well-restored
upright player from the 1920s, but it'll satisfy that "player itch"
for the time being;

(2) because its relatively new, chances are it's not been restored or
"restored at".  Very often, previous work done on a player does more
harm than good, and you spend more time fixing the messes the previous
technician made than you do putting things the way they were intended
to be;

(3) the player action design in it is pretty straightforward --
there's nothing terribly "quirky" about it, beyond a certain amount of
"shoehorning" to get the player parts into a relatively small piano
case.  I suspect that, generally speaking, the player techs who aren't
fond of the player action dislike it in large part because, to make
everything fit, it breaks many of the rules of 'what usually goes
where'.

That's my $0.02 worth, take it or leave it.

Bryan Cather
St. Louis, Missouri