WTB: W-M "Original" System
By Terry Smythe
Got a note from Ken Snowden (San Francisco) today in which he tells me he's acquired a large gutted Welte-Mignon "Original" grand piano, worthy of restoration with a mechanism removed from out of a similar piano.
He would appreciate hearing from someone who may have, or know where such a complete mechanism might be found. There were several different configurations of these pianos, and the one he has found has the spool box above the keyboard, all controls in the spoolbox, and tubing bundles around the keybed, chain-drive expression system, and a turbine type vacuum pump.
Ken Snowden
1238 Grove Street
San Francisco, CA 94117-1510
(415) 921-1326
Over the years, I've seen 3 such pianos pass through Winnipeg as I helped various folks acquire them. One of them recently had a major vacuum pump failure, and with a little luck another was located in the Buffalo area. It's here now, has been cleaned up, lubicated and appears to be functional. However, while it appears to wind up normally, it produces only about 10" vacuum right at the pump, clearly not working properly.
While the original turbine pump in that piano was of the later 2-stage slim-line style, the one found was an earlier model, much fatter, but otherwise similar 2-stage construction. Has anybody had any experience with these turbine pumps, and possibly offer some suggestions on what to check out? I've had it apart several times and can find nothing obviously wrong with it, but it continues to fail to produce the needed vacuum.
In event all else fails, does anyone have any ideas of where another such pump might be found, preferably the latter, slim-line construction.
Regards,
Terry
Terry Smythe (204) 832-3982 (voice/fax) 55 Rowand Avenue smythe@mts.net Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3J 2n6 smythe@freenet.mb.ca Home page: http://www.mts.net/~smythe
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(Message sent Wed 24 Jul 1996, 22:40:41 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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