Hello everyone!  I'd like to put my two cents in about this.  The
generation that saw these instruments new, would be in their 90's
now, if they are still alive.  The next generation (which would be
my parents) saw these in the 1940's, when most of them were on their
last gasp.  They may have remembered their folks having a player piano,
but it disappeared over the years.

My first encounter was a pleasant one, on Thanksgiving Day 1974, in
Great Falls, Montana.  I was at a friend's house, and in the family
room was a beautifully restored Beckwith upright.  It pumped easily,
it was in tune, and I couldn't have been happier.  They also couldn't
tear me away from it!  I see the younger people in their 20s and 30s
and this doesn't mean anything to them.

I now own a 1927 Waltham with a standard single-valve, a 1916 Weiser
& Sons, which is like a Gulbransen only better and better built, and
a 1910 Marquette Cremona A-roll piano.  My niece is deathly afraid of
the Cremona -- "the ghost piano" -- and my nephews want to know why
I have all these old "junkers?"

The love for the instruments, their capabilities, the ingenuity of the
player systems, all seem to be lost on the younger generations.  With
the digital pianos, and the systems that can be installed in existing
pianos, it seems like what we like is falling into obscurity, even
though we continually try to expose the public to them.

I just had to get this out of my system, after reading all the others.

With a song and a smile,
Aaron Carlson