Hi Vince,   You have an interesting job ahead of you.  The last time we
saw one of these was in 1981.  We rebuilt it and it played well.  A very
interesting feature of this piano was that it had NO pinblock.  The pins
were driven into holes in the piano plate!  The valve assembly blocks
were made of pot metal and had to be lapped flat, because of some warpage.
It also required handcutting 44 gaskets for the valves - 2 gaskets per
unit -- of blotter paper.

The crumbling red may be replacement gasket material or leather from the
pouches that are in the pouch cover.  Inspect the whole unit after removal
from the piano and before disassembly.  Our Pierce Piano Atlas dates your
piano at approximately 1929.

Art Reblitz mentions this player stack in his book Rebuilding the Player
Piano on page 149.  It is the 5th style Wurlitzer stack and that most of
castings are now cracked beyond repair. (Hope this is not the case with
your piano.)  The one we worked on had no cracks in it and as far as we
know it is still playing.

Bob