Wurlitzer Player Piano with Dale Electronics
By Bob Bailey
Dear Mr. Kravitz,
My name is Bob Bailey. Steve Zimmerman gave me your internet address as a starting point to find out about player pianos. I am looking for Newsgroups or mailing lists in order to post the following message:
I am a player piano novice and I am looking for information about Wurlitzer Spinnet Player pianos. I was recently given such a piano with serial number 977894 stamped on the sound board. It contains a combination pneumatic and electronic player mechanism with the following markings:
Mfd by Souix Division Dale Electronics, Yankton S. D.
Model D
Serial No. 3019
Patent Pending
117 VAC 60 Cycles 6 Amps
A decal on the inside of the top, indicates the piano is equiped with "Rinky Tink" and indeed there is a bar with cloth strips and metal ends which comes between the hammers and the keys.
The piano had not been used at all in at least 10 years. It was fairly dirty inside, filled with dog or cat hair and very dusty. When it was given to me I was told the previous owner had never played it and the player mechanism did not work.
I cleaned it up as best I could with a vacum cleaner and found a vacum hose between the pump and the player mechanism had been disconnected. I obtained a roll, reconnected the hose and viola! it plays. Unfortunately, when using the player, many of the keys do not play reliably and a few do not play at all (all keys play manually). Also, the roll tracks poorly when playing and seems to be about 1/4 inch out of line when rewinding.
I have read some books about the purely pnuematic player pianos but very little of that information would seem to apply to this piano. The pnematics in this piano appear to be used only to read the roll.
Since most of the player piano experts I can find are primarily interested in the older pianos, this piano cost me only moving expenses and the value of this piano is not high, I thought I would attempt to fix it. Therefore, I am looking for all kinds of information which I can use to help repair the player mechanism, such as how to take the bar used to sense the holes in the roll apart for cleaning (or is there a better way)? How do the tracking and rewind mechanisms work? Are there service manuals available for the piano or the player mechanism? If so where can I get them? How about parts for servicing this piano?
I would also be interested in background information about this Piano such as when and where it was manufactured and information about Dale electronics.
Please E-Mail me directly with responses to this inquiry at
baileyRLJr@aol.com
Any and all responses will be greatly appreciated.
Bob Bailey.
[ Editor's Note:
[
[ I own a spool box and tracker bar from one of these
[ Wurlitzer solenoid pianos. I bought the spool box and
[ tracker bar in '84 as my first experiment with computer
[ reading of rolls. I guess I've been interested in this
[ for a long time. Somewhere I've got a schematic of
[ the electronics but putting my fingers on it may be
[ hard... These pianos are NOT reproducing pianos.
[
[ I'm going to send a note to Bob asking him if he wants
[ to subscribe to the group. In the meantime, would those
[ of you who choose to reply to him directly please CC: us
[ on your comments.
[
[ Jody
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(Message sent Mon 23 Sep 1996, 02:10:10 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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