Got a note from Ken Snowden (San Francisco) today in which he tells me
he's acquired a large gutted Welte-Mignon "Original" grand piano,
worthy of restoration with a mechanism removed from out of a similar
piano.

He would appreciate hearing from someone who may have, or know where
such a complete mechanism might be found.  There were several
different configurations of these pianos, and the one he has found has
the spool box above the keyboard, all controls in the spoolbox, and
tubing bundles around the keybed, chain-drive expression system, and a
turbine type vacuum pump.

   Ken Snowden
   1238 Grove Street
   San Francisco, CA   94117-1510
   (415) 921-1326

Over the years, I've seen 3 such pianos pass through Winnipeg as I
helped various folks acquire them.  One of them recently had a
major vacuum pump failure, and with a little luck another was located
in the Buffalo area.  It's here now, has been cleaned up,
lubicated and appears to be functional.  However, while it appears
to wind up normally,  it produces only about 10" vacuum right at the
pump, clearly not working properly.

While the original turbine pump in that piano was of the later
2-stage slim-line style, the one found was an earlier model, much
fatter, but otherwise similar 2-stage construction.  Has anybody
had any  experience with these turbine pumps, and possibly offer some
suggestions on what to check out?    I've had it apart several times
and can find nothing obviously wrong with it, but it continues to fail
to produce the needed vacuum.

In event all else fails, does anyone have any ideas of where another
such pump might be found, preferably the latter, slim-line
construction.

Regards,

Terry

Terry Smythe                    (204) 832-3982 (voice/fax)
55 Rowand Avenue                smythe@mts.net
Winnipeg, MB, Canada   R3J 2n6  smythe@freenet.mb.ca
Home page: http://www.mts.net/~smythe