Walt Gerber wrote [160318 MMDigest]:

> I'm looking for a tubing diagram, availability of a test roll or
> any information on how to set up the expression system.  Much of
> the tubing has rotted and is missing.

Back in 1979, I acquired a piano identical to this one.  It was my
first rebuild of a pneumatic player system.  All I had to go by was
the book by Larry Givens.  I was 21 with no experience.  If I had any,
I'd have given the piano away to anyone who would take it.  However,
it was a great learning experience.  My piano had no markings on it,
no serial numbers, no manufacture names, etc., but a tubing diagram
was available from Player Piano Company at the time.

The player action was probably made by Amphion, but there were no
cardboard dividers with grommets in it.  Just a straight forward
pneumatic 3-tier action with wooden poppet valves and zephyr skin
pouches that were eaten by bugs.  There were quite a few Wurlitzer
valve blocks controlling all the motor pneumatics.  The pump is more
of a band organ type, and very noisy, bulky and heavy.

My first issue was rusted out screws.  I had to heat the heads of
the screws with a soldering iron to get them out.  Some were so rusted
that I had to grind out the heads and get them out after I took the
boards apart.  Then the issue was getting good zephyr skin at the time.
I couldn't.  I ended up doing the pouches twice, because the Zephyr
skin available at the time was treated with silicone and no glue would
hold it.

The bleeds for this action are in the drawer!  A secret chamber under
the feed spool will reveal them.  The passages that connect the vacuum
supply to the bleed chamber are not drilled correctly, and after
assembly the gasket was cut back to allow it to work.  Of course,
nobody told me that.  So after I finished, when a lot of notes played,
all the keys would go down and stay down until that passage was over.
This only happened when I played the roll "Liebestraum".

I went crazy trying  to find out why my piano would play any roll
perfectly except that one.  In the middle of the night it hit me, that
the suction was going low in the bleed chamber and allowing reverse
flow into the bleeds making  all the valves open.

My piano did not have the split hammer rails which are essential to
this expression system -- it had only the three or four levels of
suction and the crash (full vacuum to stack feature).  I cannot
remember if it had a soft pedal actuator.

The roll motor governor was a celluloid plate and was warped, so I made
one of brass with a jewelers saw and shellacked it in place.  It worked.
I rebuilt the Wurlitzer blocks with pouch leather and ended up using
pouch leather on the stack also with no issues.

It's a chore to install the stack into the piano because there are no
guides for the push rods, they all fall loose when the stack is
lowered.  You need the piano on its side and two or three people, or
you have to install the push rods after the stack is in place and god
forbid you have to pull it out again.

After rebuilding the player action, I started looking at the piano.
The tuning pins were still tight and I tuned it a couple of times.
There were the usual false beats etc, in an old piano that hadn't been
tuned in years.  But, when I examined the action, it was very unusual.
No book on pianos that I could find showed this action.  The parts
were totally different than any grand action anyone I knew had ever
seen or heard of.  That's when I decided to do the best I could and not
rebuild the piano.

By this time, I'd met a few people into mechanical music and discovered
that my piano was a "Sows Ear".  But, I enjoyed rebuilding the player
system and enjoyed playing the piano for several years.  I eventually
put it in an auction and made room for my 1930 Knabe Ampico B.

Another disadvantage of the piano, is the roll availability.  It takes
Apollo X rolls, none of which I could find.  So, 88 note rolls were the
only thing I had to play on it.  I was later able to find a few Apollo
X rolls.  This expression system was also used in the Seeburg X, and
MSR organ rolls.  I later acquired a Seeburg Mortuary Organ, that used
the same expression system to open and close the swell shutters.

The tubing is very straightforward on this piano, once you get into it,
you will figure it out, but diagrams are available.  Player-care has a
reprint of it.

If you are rebuilding this for a customer and they have an emotional
connection to this piano, good luck.  If this is your first rebuild,
good luck.  But, if you are looking for a good player grand piano to
rebuild, I'd run, not walk away from this project.  There are so many
cheap Ampico piano's on eBay.  I'd donate it to anyone who will have
it.  Just my opinion.

Randy Hayno