On my way back from Bude Jazz Festival I called in to service a very
nice Broadwood player with an Otto Higel action.  The local piano
technician had attempted to resolve a problem with the wind motor -
rolls simply would not play - and had failed to resolve the fault.
I spent an hour checking everything and discovered the following:

The stack was fine. All governors were OK. The wind motor was smooth
and properly regulated. The ladder chain and cogs were in good order -
nicely tight without being overdone. The take-up spool and spindle were
free-running.

But still the drive mechanism would not turn smoothly.  I diagnosed the
problem as being in the drive frame - the two retaining holes on each
side of the rectangular frame that held the central spindle in place
were very sticky.

Upon disassembly I cleaned everything but the spindle was still binding.
I realised that the two holes opposite one another were imperfectly
aligned. And so the spindle would not turn freely.  Using a small file
I reamed the holes by a few thousandths of an inch, cleaned them again,
applied a very small amount of light machine oil, and bingo! Everything
now worked beautifully.

One very happy customer.

Not a complex problem compared to some described in MMD but perhaps it
might save someone else from scratching their heads in the future!

Roger Waring
The Pianola Workshop

Solihull England