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MMD > Archives > January 1998 > 1998.01.08 > 12Prev  Next


Gulbransen Recording Piano?
By Bruce Clark

To Sam Harris -- Are you sure that the Gulbransen is not a REGISTERING
piano?   I have worked on a lot of players, and many Gulbransen players
have a decal: "The Gulbransen *Registering* piano"

Exactly what <Registering> meant is unclear, for in the Gulbransen
player, it means absolutely nothing!  Perhaps it is similar to the
over-use of the word "Solid State".  Perhaps "Registering" was to
confuse people who have heard of reproducing pianos, and the R and G
stuck in their memory bank.  The mechanism certainly did not have
anything extra that any other straight players had.  In fact, these
*Registering* Gulbransens, compared with a regular 88-note player piano,
were lacking 8 pneumatics (4 on each end of the stack).  This was a
feature (?).  They were 80-note pianos.

Unscrupulous salespersons would tell the customer that these
registering pianos would play standard player rolls, as well as 
*all* brands of reproducing rolls!  Of course they would, (without
expression) because the top four and bottom four notes had never been
installed in the stacks, the expression holes would pass over the
tracker bar without the top and bottom notes chattering.

Bruce Clark


(Message sent Thu 8 Jan 1998, 13:41:18 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.)

Key Words in Subject:  Gulbransen, Piano, Recording

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