Larry Toto asked about regulating the Pratt-Reed player.  The reason
the player either bobbles or blocks the strings is because the
pneumatic travel is in some cases less than, and in some cases, more
than key travel.

   Everything starts with the key, so let's adjust that player first to
play well with the key. Forget the player for amoment and make sure
that a pianist enjoys the action and the tone of your piano. From
there, the player mechanism is able to be adjusted.

   In every player mechanism, adjustments were possible. Sometimes
though, the player stack was either too high or too low, creating an
impossible regulation problem. So the first thing to do is to make sure
that each pneumatic on the player stack is able to raise the whippen
almost imperceptively but very slightly above the level that a key is
able to do it, when the key is _gently_ depressed. In other words, when
the key is driven hard, it will raise the whippen the same amount as
the pneumatic. When you are lightly depressing the key and pulling up
on the pneumatic sriker at the same time, there should be a slight
difference in favor of the pneumatic travel.

   The factory adjusted each note meticulously, one at a time. If you
will simply take the time to do it like they did it, it will turn out
just as nicely for you as it did for them.

Craig B.