Hi everyone!  Mr. Larry Lobel (Hi Larry!) wrote to ask about the
pouches in a 1970's Universal Player Piano.

My next door neighbor had one that started missing notes, and after
treatment with a tracker bar pump things got worse to the point that
nothing played.  When I looked at it, I could hear air loudly being
sucked into the tracker bar.

After removing the tubing from the stack I loosened the screws holding
the stack underneath the keys.  There were other wire braces beneath
the ends of the keys, so the head was loosened and moved forward enough
to remove the keys around the braces, which were screwed.

When I finally got the stack out and home, I removed the all-aluminum
decks, separated the layers with their long neoprene gaskets, and found
that all of the pouches were gone.  They were originally what looked
like latex.  As I have never seen Perflex, fortunately, I relied on
experience with 1970's singing bird cages that used the rubber
diaphragms to identify the material.

The pouches were on the ends of short cylinders of metal pushed into
the valve wells.  I cleaned all of them and made a jig for recovering
them with leather.  I machined a dished area in a block of wood.

After punching out the pouch leather, I made a small smear of medium-
thick burnt shellac on a piece of non-absorbent plastic.  I then placed
the leather over the dished area of the wood, dipped the metal cylinder
or ring into the shellac, and with my finger through the ring placed
the ring down onto the leather dishing the pouch and contacting the
leather.  There was a small amount on overlap.

After they were dry I sealed them with 50-50 rubber cement and naphtha.
I then pushed them down into their valve wells over the neoprene-faced
valves and adjusted by eye the valve travel.  After all was dry and
assembled, the stack performed perfectly with great repetition.  Once
all was set up this took only about two hours, NOT including
dismantling and re-assembly.

By the way, does anyone know if there is a supplier for the electronic
board that operated this piano?

Mr. Berley Antoine Firmin II
Bayou La Combe, Louisiana

 [ Try Story & Clark Piano Co.: 1-800-348-7340  -- Robbie