As Steve Bentley most correctly pointed out, it's immaterial if the
piano is a player or not -- sound is sound.

Player pianos have long suffered slights by those who think the player
mechanism "hampers" the piano's natural sound and playing.  Many tuners
dislike having to work around the player mechanism when tuning or
repairing the piano.  This is especially true if a grand action has to
be pulled from a Duo-Art for regulation or repair.

If you've not faced that task, or are unfamiliar with it, the usual
grand action is easily slid out of the piano once the keyslip and cheek
(side) blocks are removed.  However, in most Duo-Art installations, the
tubes from the spool box pass through the keys to connecting blocks
underneath.  These blocks have to be loosened from the action, and the
air motor hose also has to be taken loose, and the screws holding the
roll box to the upper casework.

What should be a 15-minute job becomes easily consumes a half-hour or
more.  And once out of the piano, the roll box and tubes are still in
the way of working on the action!  You can see then how some tuners
might just see all this as "unnecessary complications" for them.  On
uprights, the tuner is usually faced with lifting the upper stack out
of the piano to do any regulating of the action.  On some players this
is a fairly straight-forward process, but on others it does take some
ingenuity.

As one of the few player technicians in all of Northern California,
I often get call from other tuners who just don't want to deal with
"these beasts."  I will admit one of the more unusual calls was an
upright Ampico that needed the sustain pedal adjusted, which required
removing part of the upper stack to get to the adjustments.  It was
a rather unusual adjustment in that the pedal was stuck in the "on"
position causing the piano to have no dampening.

As for reproducing pianos requiring a bit more attention to stringing
and regulation, that is very true.  A human player can modify his or
her playing to accommodate string volume or action variations; the
reproducing mechanism though, does not, it relies on a standard
reaction across the keyboard.  So yes, for optimum reproduction one
does have to be a bit "finicky" with the restoration of the piano
itself.

Now back to the bass string issues -- a copper-core wire?  I can't
see how it would work with the tensions required on "modern" pianos
(i.e., pianos from the 1860s and on).

David Dewey
Oroville, California