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MMD > Archives > July 1998 > 1998.07.26 > 10Prev  Next


Schaal Vertical Player with Stack Underneath
By John McClelland

Thanks for all the information on the mysterious QRS roll #32351,
'The Jelly Roll Blues'.  I suspected that I really didn't have the
missing link, but it's a nice roll anyway.

I have a question for our technical brethren:  A friend has a European
upright, Schaal by brand, which needs the pumping bellows recovered.
It has a player mechanism in it of which I'm not familiar.

The control levers fit under the keybed.  When one wishes to play
a roll, you reach under the keybed, pivot the lever block 180 degrees
and lock it in place with 2 sliding tongues that fit into grooves on
each side of the block.  There are 5 levers that come through the
lever block.

My question is this: how do you get the pumping bellows out without
dismantling the whole piano???

The stack is under the keybed, the pumping bellows fits under that
and it's so tight that there is approximately 1/8 of an inch clearance
between either end of the crossover chest and the interior wall of the
vertical end pieces of the piano; about 1 inch clearance between the
top of the main chest and the bottom of the stack.

Is it necessary to remove the stack, then the pumping bellows or is
there some other trick to taking the pumping bellows out?

Apparently this piano used to be either an expression or a reproducing
piano of some sort, but it has been converted to play 88-note rolls --
the entire spool box has been ripped out and replaced with something
that looks like a Standard spoolbox and trackerbar -- so I don't have a
clue as to the original mechanism.  Any ideas or help would be
appreciated.

Thanks,

John McClelland


(Message sent Mon 27 Jul 1998, 04:08:53 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.)

Key Words in Subject:  Player, Schaal, Stack, Underneath, Vertical

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