I'm curious if anyone has done any research, or had experience in
coming up with an electric roll drive for players or reproducers? I
have a Bodine motor installed in an upright; which works wonderfully,
and is very quiet.  But are there cheaper alternatives available? Is
there some gearmotor that is available from W.W. Grainger or some other
supply house that will do the job, but for a lot less money. By the
time one has the Bodine and the controller, there are several hundred
dollars expended. I have a couple of other pianos I want to electrify,
but cant afford that much expenses.

I know the purists may well be aghast, but I feel the the purpose of
the piano is to play lifelike music. If that can be done with
reasonable expense and incidentally free up about 25% more suction for
the instrument, then so much the better.

Comments, ideas?

Thanks,¶
John McClelland

P.S. Jody, I have tried to respond to several international queries
directly, but everytime my message comes back "undelivered". Any
suggestions?

 [ Editor's Note:
 [
 [ Every e-mail system has to make some decisions about how to
 [ route e-mail.  Many e-mail systems do not have the ability to deliver
 [ e-mail directly to remote machines, so they use some "routing rules"
 [ to pick which machine to forward their mail.  Often these machines
 [ only list the common US domains: .mil, .edu, .com, .org, and .net.
 [ Any other domains are considered "errors".
 [
 [ I make the following offer to any Digest subscriber who is having a
 [ problem like this.  My machine, "foxtail.com", does NOT have trouble
 [ delivering to international addresses.  With a little
 [ not-to-hard-to-do magic you can route your international e-mail
 [ through foxtail.  If you do that and STILL have problems, you can send
 [ e-mail to me via the "rollreq@foxtail.com" and I can check the e-mail
 [ logfiles on foxtail and probably figure out what's going wrong.
 [
 [  The "magic" requires altering the e-mail address in the following
 [  way:
 [
 [      Original Address:   someone@some.where
 [
 [ change the at sign to a percent sign:
 [
 [      Partly Modified:    someone%some.where
 [
 [ Now add an at sign and foxtail.com on the end:
 [
 [      Final Address:      someone%some.where@foxtail.com
 [
 [ Ths will cause the e-mail to go through foxtail.  This should not
 [ interfere with your foreign correspondents replying to your mail.
 [
 [ I hope this is helpful.
 [
 [ Jody