Hi all,

This player piano has been eating my lunch for years now.  Not to
mention the previous tech before me that gave up.  (smart guy)

First off the customer really likes old stuff.  Their house is
furnished with really old furniture and I think even the wallpaper is
some old stuff they found somewhere.  The piano has no serial numbers
anywhere, and the decal on the front is:

•                        Autoleon
                    Triumph Auto
                         London
•
I guess they should have stuck with making sports cars.

Evidently I found the Chappel Player Piano Co. decal inside the piano
somewhere, because that's the way it's listed in my file for this
customer.

  I replaced the pinblock in this thing twice.  The first time I didn't
get it right and so did it again, this time really using lots of glue,
tight pinning, and real careful procedures.  That part's holding so
far.

The bellows take 15 seconds to "relax" and thats with everything in
line except the pneumatic stack.  The valves on this beauty were
strange.   The previous rebuilder replaced only the exhaust valves with
home made foam rubber rings.   That didn't last long.   This first time
I rebuilt the valves, I used the threaded valve stems over again and
replaced the valve leathers with patent leather and replaced the
exhaust ones with washer backed foam rubber.  The pouches I simply
replaced, I didn't coat them with anything.   It didn't play very well,
so I rebuilt the valves again, this time using new valve stems with the
force fit collars, and tiny foam washers from PPC.  I got all the
valves to seal really well before I left the customer's home last
time.  One push of the pedal and all the valves were closed and
sealed.  According to the owners, that only lasted about two months.
That was about two or three years ago.  I just now found out about this
today.  Aside from the fact that any warranty on my work has long since
expired, and aside from the fact that they really should have told me
sooner about this, I'm faced with a job that didn't hold up, again
.............    I repeat..........    AGAIN DAMN IT!

I'm really tempted to call Howes Piano in Denver and have them make me
a pneumatic stack, retro fit it to this piano and be done with it.
However, being that I'm such a nice guy, and don't give up very easily,
I'm going to open this baby up and see if maybe I can see what happened
here.  I've sealed all the wood with shellac.  All the gaskets have
been replaced with suede leather.  I have one cipher, but all the other
notes seem to play, although weakly due to massive vaccuum loss.  The
pedals don't pump up rock hard even at a furious frenzied pace.  The
valves seats were sealed with PVCE glue and are made of metal.
(typical Standard "toilet seat" looking seats)   I don't know what else
to share with you.

Any suggestions out there?  I'm already married and don't need another
obligation in my life.  I need this monkey off my back really bad.
Replies that start out with "You shoulda..." don't apply here.  I
need real solutions, not wasted bandwidth.  (I should have my head
examined.)

Lar

•                   Larry Fisher RPT, Metro Portland, Oregon's
          Factory Preferred Installer for MSR/PianoDisc Products
               phone 360-256-2999 or email larryf@pacifier.com
                    http://pacifier.com/~larryf/homepage.html
                 Beau Dahnker pianos work best under water