I recently spent several weeks buying my first player piano.  I started
out knowing absoultely zip about them, and through research, legwork,
luck, and the wonderful MMD email list, I learned the following, and
succeeded in buying a very nice nearly-working project player for
$100.  This is for the novice, looking to buy an ordinary, common,
player piano, not a rare instrument or reproducing piano.

INTRODUCTORY PIANO/PLAYER INFORMATION (or, Answers to Your Dumb
Questions)-

 - ALL player pianos that have a piano keyboard can be played by hand
   like a regular piano; they all will have at least 2 piano foot
   pedals, the right one being "sustain" (which lifts felt dampers off
   the strings), and the left one being "soft" (which shifts all the
   hammers closer to the strings).  Sometimes, there's a third middle
   pedal which was used for different things by different
   manufacturers, e.g. sustain bass only or sustain only notes
   currently being struck.  Player pianos usually have a control
   underneath the keyboard that will lock out movement of they keys
   while playing automatically.

 - pianos have 88 notes

 - the piano "action" means all the parts needed to strike a note in
   the piano.

 - one diagram I saw, of just what it takes to hit ONE note, showed
   roughly 90+ parts.  It isn't just a key pushing on the wood/felt
   hammer.

 - player pianos have roughly 10,000 (yipes!) parts to them

 - the player "action" means all the parts needed to make a piano play
   by itself; it's the mechanical/pneumatic player mechanism.

 - all player pianos made after around 1915 (which is any player you
   are likely to find) were standardized in their roll and hole size.
   So if you run across rolls at an estate sale or antique shop, it's
   very likely you can play them in any player piano you find.  (There
   were plenty of non-standard player pianos made, but the odds of you
   running across one for sale in your local swap shop are very very
   slim.)

 - an 88 note piano has many MORE than 88 piano strings- all but the
   lowest bass notes are 2 or 3 identical strings struck at once by a
   single hammer in order to get the volume (acoustic power) roughly
   equal from note to note.

 - To play the piano, you have to uncover the keys.  Once the piano
   keyboard is uncovered, there is another smaller not-so-obvious cover
   (with no obvious knobs) under the front of the keys that swings out
   and down.  Under this cover are the player controls: play/rewind,
   soft treble/bass, sometimes loud, and sometimes others.

 - some player pianos have what is called a mandolin attachment,
   intended to make the piano sound like (guess what) a mandolin.  My
   opinion is that it sounds wonderful.  The mandolin attachment is a
   light metal frame inside/near the top of the piano that holds a
   canvas or leather strip cut into "fingers".  Each finger had a metal
   tip clamped on it, and in use, the mandolin rail is lowered so that
   the fingers/metal tips are in between the piano hammers and treble
   strings.  The mandolin gets lowered or raised manually, usually by a
   lever in the spool box or near the piano keys.   If your piano
   doesn't have a mandolin and you want one, you could salvage one from
   a junk piano, or buy a brand new (kit) one for under $60.

 - virtually every player you see will have been made between 1915 and
   1925; around 1925 the industry collapsed; electric phonographs, and
   radio did it in, followed by The Depression.  The All About Pianos
   WWW site or the Pierce Piano Atlas can date any piano you find if
   you obtain the make and serial number.  The serial number is found
   stamped/burned into the inside top back of the piano, it's typically
   5 or 6 digits.  The piano frame usually has a cut out hole in the
   metal frame where you can see the serial number stamped into the
   wood beneath.

 - there are several player piano parts companies in business out
   there, carrying all sorts of replacement parts to rebuild the player
   mechanism- sprockets, chain, gears, bellows cloths, leather, etc.
   Not to mention a lot of helpful hobbiests/collectors.

 - you can still buy *brand new* piano rolls.  They typically cost
   $11-16 each, plus shipping, and have one or a few songs each.  Even
   newly arranged music is being cut to roll each year, so these aren't
   all old songs.  So undamaged rolls found at estate sales for $1-2
   each are probably a bargain, plus are probably the *exact* same
   punchings available new (perhaps the existing companys bought out
   the old companys and absorbed their song lists/masters).  Don't
   bother getting rolls with damaged paper edges; player pianos usually
   have a self-centering mechanism for the roll as it plays, and it
   won't work right on rolls with damaged edges.

CHECK THE PIANO FIRST-

 - ensure you get a good PIANO first; there is no sense spending time
   or money restoring the player mechanism if the piano is crummy;
   pianos continue to produce sound long after they are no longer
   "good".  Believe me, you will be able to get a (non working) player
   with a good piano for dirt cheap.

 - Plan to hire a piano technician to come look at the piano you decide
   you are interested in.  (Make it clear with him you want his quiet
   opinion on the PIANO, e.g. you don't want him to go "Hey look, I
   fixed the player!!".)

 - You can also examine a lot of important stuff yourself...  The most
   important part of the piano is the sound board- it amplifies the
   strings' vibrations.  If you look behind the piano, you see the
   heavy outer frame, and a couple heavy vertical frame support studs
   (make sure the frame is still intact, and unbroken/unrepaired,
   especially near the bottom).  In between the studs, you see a flat
   spruce board, with ribs glued to it.  This large flat board is the
   back of the sound board.  In a bad piano, this board is cracked or
   the ribs have come unglued (sometimes very slightly, enough to slip
   in a metal spatula).  A bad sound board means you don't want this
   player piano.  Screwed to the inside of the sound board is a cast
   metal frame that holds the piano strings.  If you can see enough of
   it, ensure this metal frame isn't cracked (a serious problem).

 - The bottom front panel of player pianos comes off easily... at the
   top of the panel there is usually one or two spring steel or wood
   latches- press them, and the top of the panel swings out, then lift
   it up off pegs, and it's free.  Now you can see the main foot
   bellows, vacuum reservoir(s), various loose parts sitting on the
   bottom :-), piano pedal and other linkages and medium sized
   bellows.  With a flashlight, look past all this stuff at the piano
   string bridge(s).  If made of wood (usually), check to see if they
   are cracked or not.  A cracked bridge is bad.

 - Examine the piano tuning pins (up top).  They should all be the same
   size- if not, it may mean a pin was replaced with a larger size
   (because it came loose)... check the tuning pin block if you can to
   ensure it isn't cracked, if it is, this is very bad.

 - Do the piano's sustain and soft pedals work?  Do all the piano notes
   work, without buzzing or other weird sounds? (...test with sustain
   pedal depressed.)  Are any hammers broken off?  Are the hammer felts
   moth-eaten? (Refelting is perhaps a $300 job.) (String grooves in
   the felt hammers are ok.) Light rust on the piano strings will not
   affect the piano operation.  Are the key ivories missing/chipped?
   They can be replaced/repaired, but it'll cost you.

-CHECK THE PLAYER PARTS-

 - on all players, the entire top front of the piano easily lifts
   up/swings out of the way, or comes off with a pair of latches,
   providing visual access to much of the player and piano mechanism.

 - gently feel the bellows cloth to see if it's very brittle- on main
   foot bellows, plus, from the top, feel some of the small individual
   note pneumatics if you can see/reach them.

 - the part behind the top sliding doors, that holds the piano roll, is
   called the spool box.

 - to the right of the spool box is an interesting looking device that
   is called an air motor.  It has several sliding valves (attached to
   a wire cam shaft) which un/cover holes.  The air motor turns the
   roll both in play or rewind.

 - to the left of the air motor, in between it and the spool box is a
   metal frame holding a set of gears, sprockets, and chains that
   comprise the air motor transmission.  On some brands, these parts
   are made of pot metal, which starts to deterioriate over the years,
   rotting out and crumbling.  Are the gears and transmission frame
   rotted?  In "play", the transmission engages gears, in "rewind", the
   sprockets and chain are used.  Ensure the play/rewind lever on the
   keyboard switches the "play" gear in and out.

 - to the left of the spool box may be a small/medium sized pneumatic
   which is used for automatic tracking alignment adjustment of the
   roll.  Do the sustain ("loud") and soft controls levers on the
   keyboard also work?  Sometimes there are vacuum operated buttons on
   the keyboard as well- look underneath; are the hoses still
   connected, is the valve still there, connected to the button?

 - Near the two large foot pedal bellows, there will be 1 or 2 vacuum
   reservoirs (either one for each pump, or one large shared one).
   Does pumping the foot pedals suck down the vacuum reservoir?

 - BEWARE of a player powered by a vaccuum box or displaying hacking
   (cut holes in front or back) to work with an external vacuum source
   (a vacuum cleaner will work, in fact).  The conversion to
   electricity may have been done because it deteriorated so much that
   it could no longer be played by foot pumping (because everything was
   so leaky).  I looked at a $900 piano that "played beautifully", but
   only due the wonders of electricity... pumping by foot could barely
   move the roll, and missed most of the notes.  Although this one
   SEEMED fine when played via electricity, it actually needed a LOT of
   work, in fact MORE than the $1-200 "broken" players I've seen.

 - Be cautious of pianos displaying obvious signs of somebody hacking
   it- poor fixing; duct tape, hose clamps, holes cut in wood, etc.
   Fixing up an unrestored or sensibly repaired original is much better
   than trying to overcome bungled repair efforts.

 - Does the air motor move?  Does the piano play?  Does it rewind?  The
   book by Reblitz has a great couple-page writeup on debugging player
   problems, most of which could be done while you are looking at
   somebody's piano (given enough time).

 - What brand is the player mechanism ("action")?  You don't want to
   get a horribly difficult mechanism as your first restoration
   effort.  Player actions from any one company were used in any number
   of different brand pianos.  Same brand- pianos used any number of
   different actions.  "Standard" brand actions are perhaps the most
   common action, and parts, help, and documentation are widely
   available.  Check out the brass tracker bar (the bar with holes that
   the paper goes over).  If it has trapezoidal holes, it is a Simplex
   brand player action (another common brand).  If it has rectangular
   holes and 2 staggered larger holes near each end (apart from the
   note holes), it's likely it is a Standard brand action (these
   staggered holes are used for automatic tracking).

ADVICE-

 - get player piano repair books out of the public library

 - get "how to buy a good used piano" books out from the public
   library.

 - get a copy of the pages from a large old (obsolete) Player Piano
   Catalog that identifies player actions.  It correlates piano brands
   with the actions commonly used in them; you want to be able to
   identify the common player actions, and you want to avoid difficult
   to restore or uncommon ones.

 - ask the Mechanical Music Digest list for advice!

 - you have to decide what you want... do you want a player piano that
   is:

     - truly restored  (all pneumatics, valves, piano strings, hammers,
       cabinet, etc.)

     - a functional player but in need of restoration A problem with
       this is, if it works, the owner may THINK it's in fine/valuable
       shape, but in fact could need complete pneumatic rework.

     - a non-functional player but intact & pretty good otherwise You
       should be able to a really nice one like this for $100-400, plus
       moving expenses.

     - an intact wreck (peeling veneer, etc.)

 - go look at *every* player piano in your area that is for sale,
   whether or not it's in your price range, whether or not it's a
   basket case; you will learn a GREAT DEAL about players by doing this
   accompanied by reading library books.  You will learn the difference
   between a free "make offer" piano, a $300 piano, and a $1,500 piano-
   in many cases, there is very little if any difference in the
   instrument!  You will quickly learn that any piano with a
   non-functional player is the proverbial dead albatross around the
   owner's neck.  It will cost him over $100 just to remove it from the
   basement in order to throw it away, or spend countless hours
   demolishing it into bitty pieces and then carting them to the curb.
   It is definitely a buyers market for non-functional players.  If
   your offer on the non-functional player is rejected (unlikely?),
   leave your number and ask them to call when they change their mind.

 - paying *somebody else* to correctly fully restore an ordinary player
   piano will cost roughly $4,000-7,000, and you will never be able to
   sell it for anywhere near that, so you'd better really love it and
   want to hang onto it a while.  You can probably pay to get a player
   working "acceptably" for far, far less than that.  OR do the work
   yourself.  Note that refinishing a piano back to piano-gloss-finish
   is a HUGE labor intensive job.  Quite satisfactory furniture-quality
   results can be obtained yourself.

 - it will cost $150-400 to move a player piano.  Cost may go up if
   there are stairs, difficult passageways, and distance.  This
   surprising (to many) large cost to move it can be an effective
   negotiating point in making a offer on a broken player piano.

 - buy a player piano test roll.  It plays ~82 of the notes on the
   piano up and down the scale, both as a sustained note, and quickly
   blipping each key several times.  This can tell you an awful LOT
   about an alleged "restored" or "works fine" piano.  I looked at a
   $1,500 "mint condition" piano whose owner thought a better one did
   not exist... until he saw it would not play the test roll.  Not
   being able to play the roll indicates some sort of deficiency- bad
   valves, pouches, pneumatics, etc.  The reason all 88 notes are not
   played is that some player companys used a few holes on each end of
   the tracker bar for special effects, in particular, "rewind".  You
   wouldn't want the test roll to trigger rewind half way thru the
   roll, so a few holes on each end of the tracker bar are never
   tested.

Hope this helps you in your piano search!

Copyright, R. Inzero, 1996.¶
Feel free to use/distribute/MMD-archive this, keeping my name on it, as
long as you don't make any money off it.  Hopes this helps future MMD
list members!

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