Hello, MMDers!

Recently, Brett Mohr has asked about Simplex valve restoration, and got
many helpful hints/suggestions, along with a comment from Craig
Brougher that "...you picked a real 'doozy' for your first player job."

Reading all these Simplex steam/heat/water techniques and caveats, and
being in the market for my 1st player piano, I'm wondering which common
player actions are considered "easy" (or at least "not difficult" :-)
).    I've started reading Reblitz (skipping around), and which actions
are "not difficult" havn't really jumped out at me.

I'm now armed (thanks to Bob C.!) with some action identification info,
and I've figured out to stay away from a Gulbransen (sp?).  From Craig
B's comment, perhaps I'd better stay away from a Simplex too, or is
that as easy as it gets?  Are actions with unit valves like the Simplex
and Amphion typically harder to redo than an action with a pouch
board?  (Or am I getting some of my info garbled being a book-learned
novice at this?)

So I'm shopping for a local player with a nicely styled, good piano,
and an action that is not difficult to restore.

I've figured out that ANY piano I get WILL need the pneumatics
restored, whether the action is working or not, so I might as well not
spend $1500 on a piano that the owner thinks is "working like new" just
because it can play a roll and hit notes by itself; I'll get the better
value for my money by buying one that is clearly "broken" from the
owner's perspective, for a lot less $$- it will require exactly the
same action resto work.  Thanks to Bob, I now know that so far, I've
seen pianos with these actions:  Artemis, Starr or Aeolian, Standard,
and Amphion.

After some reading, I guess I don't want the Artemis as I've read it is
poorly engineered and a poor performer.  For various reasons, the
pianos I've seen weren't the one for me, except perhaps for the one
with the Amphion, which I'm still considering.  One of my concerns is
that the unit valves on the Amphion action may be in the "hard"
category, but I don't know, which is why I'm asking the collective
wisdom of this list.  The Amphion has brass tubes coming out of the
tracker bar; are these going to make the restoration a lot harder
(like, are the tubes all one piece jobs from the tracker into the
valve, and have to be broken out of the glued wood block or is there a
rubber connection joint in there somewhere that I can't yet see?)  The
restoration books I've seen so far haven't had that little detail in
it.

Since I have the floor (screen?), I might as well ask some specific
questions about the piano I'm looking at now (applies to some others
I've seen, too):

    -if a hammer refelting is necessary, roughly how much would this
     cost?  Is this a hundred dollar job or a 400 dollar job?

    -if some ivories are off the keys, can they just be glued back on,
     or does the whole ivory set have to be replaced?  (again, about
     how much for a reivory job?)

    -is some plating worn off the tracker bar something to be concerned
     with?  Can it be used just as well without replating/replacing?
     The bar is smooth, but some plating is worn off the lower part.
     This is the oldest piano I've seen yet (1917- man, that All About
     Pianos site has been very very helpful to me!), and has probably
     seen the most use, but is also the best preserved fixer-upper I've
     seen in many aspects.

Any help/advice much appreciated!

---¶
Rick Inzero¶
Northern Telecom, Inc.¶
Rochester, NY                                   rdi@cci.com