Advice On Buying Your First Player Piano
By Rick Inzero
I recently spent several weeks buying my first player piano. I started out knowing absoultely zip about them, and through research, legwork, luck, and the wonderful MMD email list, I learned the following, and succeeded in buying a very nice nearly-working project player for $100. This is for the novice, looking to buy an ordinary, common, player piano, not a rare instrument or reproducing piano.
INTRODUCTORY PIANO/PLAYER INFORMATION (or, Answers to Your Dumb Questions)-
- ALL player pianos that have a piano keyboard can be played by hand
like a regular piano; they all will have at least 2 piano foot
pedals, the right one being "sustain" (which lifts felt dampers off
the strings), and the left one being "soft" (which shifts all the
hammers closer to the strings). Sometimes, there's a third middle
pedal which was used for different things by different
manufacturers, e.g. sustain bass only or sustain only notes
currently being struck. Player pianos usually have a control
underneath the keyboard that will lock out movement of they keys
while playing automatically.
- pianos have 88 notes
- the piano "action" means all the parts needed to strike a note in
the piano.
- one diagram I saw, of just what it takes to hit ONE note, showed
roughly 90+ parts. It isn't just a key pushing on the wood/felt
hammer.
- player pianos have roughly 10,000 (yipes!) parts to them
- the player "action" means all the parts needed to make a piano play
by itself; it's the mechanical/pneumatic player mechanism.
- all player pianos made after around 1915 (which is any player you
are likely to find) were standardized in their roll and hole size.
So if you run across rolls at an estate sale or antique shop, it's
very likely you can play them in any player piano you find. (There
were plenty of non-standard player pianos made, but the odds of you
running across one for sale in your local swap shop are very very
slim.)
- an 88 note piano has many MORE than 88 piano strings- all but the
lowest bass notes are 2 or 3 identical strings struck at once by a
single hammer in order to get the volume (acoustic power) roughly
equal from note to note.
- To play the piano, you have to uncover the keys. Once the piano
keyboard is uncovered, there is another smaller not-so-obvious cover
(with no obvious knobs) under the front of the keys that swings out
and down. Under this cover are the player controls: play/rewind,
soft treble/bass, sometimes loud, and sometimes others.
- some player pianos have what is called a mandolin attachment,
intended to make the piano sound like (guess what) a mandolin. My
opinion is that it sounds wonderful. The mandolin attachment is a
light metal frame inside/near the top of the piano that holds a
canvas or leather strip cut into "fingers". Each finger had a metal
tip clamped on it, and in use, the mandolin rail is lowered so that
the fingers/metal tips are in between the piano hammers and treble
strings. The mandolin gets lowered or raised manually, usually by a
lever in the spool box or near the piano keys. If your piano
doesn't have a mandolin and you want one, you could salvage one from
a junk piano, or buy a brand new (kit) one for under $60.
- virtually every player you see will have been made between 1915 and
1925; around 1925 the industry collapsed; electric phonographs, and
radio did it in, followed by The Depression. The All About Pianos
WWW site or the Pierce Piano Atlas can date any piano you find if
you obtain the make and serial number. The serial number is found
stamped/burned into the inside top back of the piano, it's typically
5 or 6 digits. The piano frame usually has a cut out hole in the
metal frame where you can see the serial number stamped into the
wood beneath.
- there are several player piano parts companies in business out
there, carrying all sorts of replacement parts to rebuild the player
mechanism- sprockets, chain, gears, bellows cloths, leather, etc.
Not to mention a lot of helpful hobbiests/collectors.
- you can still buy *brand new* piano rolls. They typically cost
$11-16 each, plus shipping, and have one or a few songs each. Even
newly arranged music is being cut to roll each year, so these aren't
all old songs. So undamaged rolls found at estate sales for $1-2
each are probably a bargain, plus are probably the *exact* same
punchings available new (perhaps the existing companys bought out
the old companys and absorbed their song lists/masters). Don't
bother getting rolls with damaged paper edges; player pianos usually
have a self-centering mechanism for the roll as it plays, and it
won't work right on rolls with damaged edges.
CHECK THE PIANO FIRST-
- ensure you get a good PIANO first; there is no sense spending time
or money restoring the player mechanism if the piano is crummy;
pianos continue to produce sound long after they are no longer
"good". Believe me, you will be able to get a (non working) player
with a good piano for dirt cheap.
- Plan to hire a piano technician to come look at the piano you decide
you are interested in. (Make it clear with him you want his quiet
opinion on the PIANO, e.g. you don't want him to go "Hey look, I
fixed the player!!".)
- You can also examine a lot of important stuff yourself... The most
important part of the piano is the sound board- it amplifies the
strings' vibrations. If you look behind the piano, you see the
heavy outer frame, and a couple heavy vertical frame support studs
(make sure the frame is still intact, and unbroken/unrepaired,
especially near the bottom). In between the studs, you see a flat
spruce board, with ribs glued to it. This large flat board is the
back of the sound board. In a bad piano, this board is cracked or
the ribs have come unglued (sometimes very slightly, enough to slip
in a metal spatula). A bad sound board means you don't want this
player piano. Screwed to the inside of the sound board is a cast
metal frame that holds the piano strings. If you can see enough of
it, ensure this metal frame isn't cracked (a serious problem).
- The bottom front panel of player pianos comes off easily... at the
top of the panel there is usually one or two spring steel or wood
latches- press them, and the top of the panel swings out, then lift
it up off pegs, and it's free. Now you can see the main foot
bellows, vacuum reservoir(s), various loose parts sitting on the
bottom :-), piano pedal and other linkages and medium sized
bellows. With a flashlight, look past all this stuff at the piano
string bridge(s). If made of wood (usually), check to see if they
are cracked or not. A cracked bridge is bad.
- Examine the piano tuning pins (up top). They should all be the same
size- if not, it may mean a pin was replaced with a larger size
(because it came loose)... check the tuning pin block if you can to
ensure it isn't cracked, if it is, this is very bad.
- Do the piano's sustain and soft pedals work? Do all the piano notes
work, without buzzing or other weird sounds? (...test with sustain
pedal depressed.) Are any hammers broken off? Are the hammer felts
moth-eaten? (Refelting is perhaps a $300 job.) (String grooves in
the felt hammers are ok.) Light rust on the piano strings will not
affect the piano operation. Are the key ivories missing/chipped?
They can be replaced/repaired, but it'll cost you.
-CHECK THE PLAYER PARTS-
- on all players, the entire top front of the piano easily lifts
up/swings out of the way, or comes off with a pair of latches,
providing visual access to much of the player and piano mechanism.
- gently feel the bellows cloth to see if it's very brittle- on main
foot bellows, plus, from the top, feel some of the small individual
note pneumatics if you can see/reach them.
- the part behind the top sliding doors, that holds the piano roll, is
called the spool box.
- to the right of the spool box is an interesting looking device that
is called an air motor. It has several sliding valves (attached to
a wire cam shaft) which un/cover holes. The air motor turns the
roll both in play or rewind.
- to the left of the air motor, in between it and the spool box is a
metal frame holding a set of gears, sprockets, and chains that
comprise the air motor transmission. On some brands, these parts
are made of pot metal, which starts to deterioriate over the years,
rotting out and crumbling. Are the gears and transmission frame
rotted? In "play", the transmission engages gears, in "rewind", the
sprockets and chain are used. Ensure the play/rewind lever on the
keyboard switches the "play" gear in and out.
- to the left of the spool box may be a small/medium sized pneumatic
which is used for automatic tracking alignment adjustment of the
roll. Do the sustain ("loud") and soft controls levers on the
keyboard also work? Sometimes there are vacuum operated buttons on
the keyboard as well- look underneath; are the hoses still
connected, is the valve still there, connected to the button?
- Near the two large foot pedal bellows, there will be 1 or 2 vacuum
reservoirs (either one for each pump, or one large shared one).
Does pumping the foot pedals suck down the vacuum reservoir?
- BEWARE of a player powered by a vaccuum box or displaying hacking
(cut holes in front or back) to work with an external vacuum source
(a vacuum cleaner will work, in fact). The conversion to
electricity may have been done because it deteriorated so much that
it could no longer be played by foot pumping (because everything was
so leaky). I looked at a $900 piano that "played beautifully", but
only due the wonders of electricity... pumping by foot could barely
move the roll, and missed most of the notes. Although this one
SEEMED fine when played via electricity, it actually needed a LOT of
work, in fact MORE than the $1-200 "broken" players I've seen.
- Be cautious of pianos displaying obvious signs of somebody hacking
it- poor fixing; duct tape, hose clamps, holes cut in wood, etc.
Fixing up an unrestored or sensibly repaired original is much better
than trying to overcome bungled repair efforts.
- Does the air motor move? Does the piano play? Does it rewind? The
book by Reblitz has a great couple-page writeup on debugging player
problems, most of which could be done while you are looking at
somebody's piano (given enough time).
- What brand is the player mechanism ("action")? You don't want to
get a horribly difficult mechanism as your first restoration
effort. Player actions from any one company were used in any number
of different brand pianos. Same brand- pianos used any number of
different actions. "Standard" brand actions are perhaps the most
common action, and parts, help, and documentation are widely
available. Check out the brass tracker bar (the bar with holes that
the paper goes over). If it has trapezoidal holes, it is a Simplex
brand player action (another common brand). If it has rectangular
holes and 2 staggered larger holes near each end (apart from the
note holes), it's likely it is a Standard brand action (these
staggered holes are used for automatic tracking).
ADVICE-
- get player piano repair books out of the public library
- get "how to buy a good used piano" books out from the public
library.
- get a copy of the pages from a large old (obsolete) Player Piano
Catalog that identifies player actions. It correlates piano brands
with the actions commonly used in them; you want to be able to
identify the common player actions, and you want to avoid difficult
to restore or uncommon ones.
- ask the Mechanical Music Digest list for advice!
- you have to decide what you want... do you want a player piano that
is:
- truly restored (all pneumatics, valves, piano strings, hammers,
cabinet, etc.)
- a functional player but in need of restoration A problem with
this is, if it works, the owner may THINK it's in fine/valuable
shape, but in fact could need complete pneumatic rework.
- a non-functional player but intact & pretty good otherwise You
should be able to a really nice one like this for $100-400, plus
moving expenses.
- an intact wreck (peeling veneer, etc.)
- go look at *every* player piano in your area that is for sale,
whether or not it's in your price range, whether or not it's a
basket case; you will learn a GREAT DEAL about players by doing this
accompanied by reading library books. You will learn the difference
between a free "make offer" piano, a $300 piano, and a $1,500 piano-
in many cases, there is very little if any difference in the
instrument! You will quickly learn that any piano with a
non-functional player is the proverbial dead albatross around the
owner's neck. It will cost him over $100 just to remove it from the
basement in order to throw it away, or spend countless hours
demolishing it into bitty pieces and then carting them to the curb.
It is definitely a buyers market for non-functional players. If
your offer on the non-functional player is rejected (unlikely?),
leave your number and ask them to call when they change their mind.
- paying *somebody else* to correctly fully restore an ordinary player
piano will cost roughly $4,000-7,000, and you will never be able to
sell it for anywhere near that, so you'd better really love it and
want to hang onto it a while. You can probably pay to get a player
working "acceptably" for far, far less than that. OR do the work
yourself. Note that refinishing a piano back to piano-gloss-finish
is a HUGE labor intensive job. Quite satisfactory furniture-quality
results can be obtained yourself.
- it will cost $150-400 to move a player piano. Cost may go up if
there are stairs, difficult passageways, and distance. This
surprising (to many) large cost to move it can be an effective
negotiating point in making a offer on a broken player piano.
- buy a player piano test roll. It plays ~82 of the notes on the
piano up and down the scale, both as a sustained note, and quickly
blipping each key several times. This can tell you an awful LOT
about an alleged "restored" or "works fine" piano. I looked at a
$1,500 "mint condition" piano whose owner thought a better one did
not exist... until he saw it would not play the test roll. Not
being able to play the roll indicates some sort of deficiency- bad
valves, pouches, pneumatics, etc. The reason all 88 notes are not
played is that some player companys used a few holes on each end of
the tracker bar for special effects, in particular, "rewind". You
wouldn't want the test roll to trigger rewind half way thru the
roll, so a few holes on each end of the tracker bar are never
tested.
Hope this helps you in your piano search!
Copyright, R. Inzero, 1996.
Feel free to use/distribute/MMD-archive this, keeping my name on it, as long as you don't make any money off it. Hopes this helps future MMD list members!
---
Rick Inzero
Northern Telecom, Inc.
Rochester, NY rdi@cci.com |
(Message sent Fri 1 Nov 1996, 21:02:52 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
|
|
Mechanical
Music Digest™ Archives
