Since there has been some discussion in the 140112 and 140113 MMD
about what to do with a gutted ex-player piano, I thought I might give
him some ideas.  When I came out of the army in 1945 and moved into a
house in Brooklyn, New York in early 1946, I bought an old ex-player
piano, about fifty-four inches high.  This was before I got involved
with making master arrangements for the piano roll companies.  The
player guts were missing.  I used the piano for years to make
arrangements for pianos and orchestras.  In 1963 when I joined Imperial
Industrial Co. to make piano roll arrangements, that piano was used a
lot.

In the old days piano dealers were in the habit of cutting down the top
of a piano and fitting a mirror to it, so that the piano didn't look so
big.  In the late sixties, I decided to do something with that piano
like the dealers had done.  First I used Red Devil paint remover to
take off all that varnish.  I decided to make a coffee table from the
piano cover, which still had the Kranich & Bach emblem on it.  I took
the piano apart, removed all the varnish, and found a beautiful cover
of red mahogany.  I made the coffee table, using a set of small tapered
legs which were very common in those days.

I didn't square-cut the top like the dealers did, but instead I just
tapered the top sides at a 45-degree angle.  I decided to make a high-
fidelity speaker unit of that piano.  High fidelity was a big thing in
those years.  I went to a surplus radio store and bought five speakers.
One was a 12" speaker that I mounted to the sliding foot-pedal door.  I
put two 8" oval speakers on the music shelf.  And I put two 3" tweeters
at the top of the harp.  All five speakers cost me about eighteen or
twenty dollars.  I also cut and fitted two slim fluorescent bulbs to
the center of the music board.

I had a Grommes 10-watt amplifier (this had radio tubes and a heavy
transformer), a Bogen-Lenco turntable with a half-moon speed control.
In those days we only had monaural records.  When I played a record and
the key was not right, I could move the speed control to match the key
of that record.  Then I could play along with the record.  I also had a
Sano accordion with a good speaker.  I had asked the radio store person
for a crossover to separate the highs from the lows, and he said that
all I needed was two 30-cent condensers.  I drilled a hole in the front
lower board for a jack to connect the wire to the amplifier.

Now for the surprise.  I connected wires from the accordion amplifier
to the Grommes and ran another to the piano.  I boosted all the bass on
the accordion and boosted all the treble and tweeters on the piano.  I
forgot to mention that I removed the player piano controls from the
flip bar on the piano front, and put three controls for the highs and
lows, plus a light switch.  I put a monaural record on the Bogen unit,
and--surprise!--I got stereo.  The piano was on one side of the room
and the accordion was across from it.  When I see the Benny Goodman
record of them playing in Carnegie Hall in 1938, stereo-fied, I can
laugh because I know how they did it.

I didn't make the piano amplified; I merely used it as a speaker,
because the soundboard of a piano amplifies the strings.  Have fun!

Hi Babit