Some years ago I received a call from a gentleman who was 100 years
old.  He lived in a retirement home, and his pianola, A Steck half Duo-
Art, had died.  I drove the forty miles to see him.  He could only walk
at a shuffle, and his pedaling days were long gone.

His Steck was a battered and bashed thing in a dark corner of the small
ballroom.  It had been electrified with the usual vacuum cleaner motor,
plastic plumbing, and copious quantities of duct tape.  It had been re-
stored at some stage in its life, and the pipework and leather all
seemed OK.  However, when the motor roared into life, nothing would
move.

I removed all the plumbing, which was bunged up with several attempts 
at duct-taping it, and put some proper tubing on, and off she went, but
roaring along at breakneck speed, with bits of paper flying off the
roll.  Another hour later, I had everything adjusted and found one of
the few undamaged rolls amongst his huge collection, and I started the
piano up again.  It played sweetly and he was well pleased.  "Of
course," he said, somewhat sadly, "you can't hear much expression with
that bloody motor."  I played it again, but pedaled it.  I was quite
amazed at its responsiveness and the huge amount of variation in ex-
pression that my pedaling plus the half Duo-Art mechanism made
possible.  "Wish I could still do that," the poor old guy said.

Regards to all,
Nigel Perry