Geoff Ward asks in the 170816 Digest:

> Regarding the explanation by Bob Conant (MMD 170813), is the Marque
> Ampico inferior in any way (apart from lack of a motor) to the
> ordinary powered model A Ampico?  Is an upright Ampico inferior
> to a grand Ampico?

In the same MMD issue Mike Walter tells about a foot pumped Ampico that
had expression pneumatics only for the treble side of the piano.  The
piano is long gone so we cannot examine it for originality but I doubt
that the American Piano Company built an Ampico with this arrangement.
However, there were some other methods of accomplishing the expression
that I am aware of.

First, many of the foot pumped Ampicos or Marque Ampicos had a full set
of Ampico A expression pneumatics which worked quite well.  The only
requirement was that the operator would have to pump constantly in
order to have an air supply that remained consistent so that the
expression mechanism could do its job.

My piano was a Foster and had all the expression pneumatics _except_ the
crescendo pneumatic.  The vacuum levels and the fast and slow crescendo
functions were handled by a set of calibrated bleeds that fed from the
tracker bar openings to the small pneumatics on the expression
pneumatic.  A the time I had no good way to measure the effectiveness
of this system but just listening to the piano playing it seemed to
provide expression OK.

There were several other differences not related to the expression
system that were unique on this piano.  The first difference is that it
had a transposing tracker bar.  As you can imagine, this did not work
when playing a roll with expression coding as it would mis-register the
expression holes.

To remedy this, there is a switch in the spoolbox to turn the
expression on and off.  With it off, the tracker tubing was routed
through a cutout box that disconnected the expression holes.  Another
variation is that the piano has a "gauge" that measures the supply
vacuum so that the operator could use it to maintain a steady vacuum
level to allow the expression devices to control the stack vacuum on
both the treble and bass sides.

Mr. Ward asks if the Marque Ampico is inferior to an electric Ampico.
I think the expression control is not quite as good in the foot pumped
version.  However, properly restored and regulated it probably does
fairly well.  It has the further advantage that the operator can add
some additional variations in the music by using pumping techniques.
To get maximum music from a piano, the electric Ampico would be more
satisfying to many people.

Mr. Ward further asks about an upright Ampico vs. an Ampico grand.  This
becomes a rather subjective question that can be answered by the person
listening to them.  I think it is a common opinion that the larger
grand pianos have a superior sound.  This means pianos 5 feet 8 inches
and greater.  These pianos have larger soundboards and longer strings.
Grands are generally configured for faster repetition of notes and have
a different type of dampers.

On the other hand, a _good_ upright piano can sound much better than
a "baby" grand or spinet, again because of the larger soundboard and
longer strings.  This last paragraph is strictly my opinion and I
expect to see some alternative opinions from the experts on this
digest.

I hope all this is useful to you.

Regards,
Bob Conant
Bradenton, Florida, USA