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MMD > Archives > May 2012 > 2012.05.13 > 03Prev  Next


Don't Put Sticky Tape on a Tracker Bar!
By John Phillips

Ladies and Gentlemen,  As I recently reported, I have spent quite
a long time in regulating my Aeolian roll motor.  There was one
hiccup I didn't mention.

To check the speed of the motor after each adjustment, I used my
Mastertouch 88-note test roll, which has all the usual test
perforations for each note in turn, and also two printed bars
three-and-a-half feet apart.  At speed 70, of course, thirty seconds
should elapse between the passage of the first mark across the tracker
bar and the arrival of the second.  It also meant that I was hearing
the lowest thirty or so notes go though their test routine each time.

After a few goes this became very irritating, so I ran a length of
sticky tape right along the tracker bar.  That shut up the notes,
and I spent about a week in relative silence while I played with the
motor.  When it was as good as I could get it, I peeled the tape off
the tracker bar.

Unfortunately, it was cheap sticky tape and, while the tape came
off, much of the adhesive didn't.  A surge of impatience led me to
grab a bottle of White Spirit (petroleum-based cleaning fluid), and
a tissue.  This was a bad idea; a good deal of the adhesive and of
the tissue fibres ended up in the tracker bar ports.  My tracker
bar sucker was of no help, because the clogging balls of fibre and
adhesive were sticky, and they stuck.

I had to prise out what I could from each hole with a sewing needle,
and then insert a pipe cleaner in each port in turn, trying to avoid
pushing anything further in.  Eventually I had to pull the upper
player action out of the piano and tackle some of the tracker bar
tubes from the transposer end.

Happily, my cleaning up efforts seem to have worked, and after a visit
from a piano tuner to check my efforts at regulation (they weren't
entirely up to scratch ), the player is performing at its best so far.
It's not perfect, but I think I'd let some-one else listen to it.

John Phillips in Hobart, Tasmania


(Message sent Sun 13 May 2012, 07:26:14 GMT, from time zone GMT+1000.)

Key Words in Subject:  Bar, Don't, Put, Sticky, Tape, Tracker

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