Introduction
By Doug Helfman
Having been screening the digest for several weeks, I guess it's about time to introduce myself to you all.
I'm Doug Helfman, an accountant, married to a physician, with two girls age 5 and 8. I was attracted to player pianos almost 40 years ago upon hearing Zez Confrey's "Dizzy Fingers" on a restaurant player piano. Perhaps it was being told that my grandfather who I never knew used to play Dizzy Fingers. He used to play piano and organ in the silent movie theaters.
My interest abated until college years in the early 70's when I helped purchase a player piano for my fraternity. A few years of that exposure sufficed until last fall when my older daughter voiced an interest in taking piano lessons. The time seemed right to meld my lifelong interest with my daughter's, and my wife found out she married a truly crazy person when I began the search.
We now own 1919 Milton upright piano with a Welte-Mignon licensee action (no, not the piano located north of NYC that was recently posted to the digest). The piano works although not recently reconditioned, so it has some problems. Through my search I met a local piano technician, Debra St. Charles, and a reproducer expert extraodinaire, John Grant, who told me about this digest.
Now I'm on the learning curve regarding Welte's and players, and find the interchange of the digest both interesting and instructional. I know it's only a matter of time before I find out first hand what makes my own player do what it does.
Doug Helfman For you history buffs, yes this town near
Catonsville, Maryland Baltimore is where Father Daniel Berrigan
broke into a Selective Service office and
trashed files about 25 years ago, about six
houses from my home.
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(Message sent Sat 2 Mar 1996, 21:01:17 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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