[ I asked Jean-Pierre to describe his Odeola-like piano. ]

My player piano is a French Klein, serial number 33918 (before 1920),
with a "no-name" pneumatic action which looks like Odeola: the
four-chamber air-motor and the tracking system look like Odeola ones,
but obviously much cheaper, and it uses two tiers of pneumatics instead
of three.

It works, but the piano is not in good condition.  It has worked
hard for me and I've delayed maintenance -- very expensive.

I've "MIDI-fied" the piano with a system made of surplus relays, some
electronics and a microcontroller Atmel AVR (a small board is visible
at the right of photographs).  This system works with a few problems;
one or two of my relay-made electro-valves remain stuck after a few
months of disuse.

On the lid of the piano, there are a computer (with Cakewalk), its
charger and a pink box temporarily used to connect together two male
MIDI plugs.

I attach three photographs of my piano and a schema drawing.  The
schema is approximately to scale when printed on a size A4 sheet.
(I used Turbocad 3.01 to draw it and I pasted it into Word 97).

The length of the pneumatics in my schema is probably exaggerated, and
there are probably leather joints between the vertical plank and inputs
of pouches to ensure airtightness (in addition to the beautiful red
paper joint). but I don't wish to dismantle the action to verify this !

Best regards from Bordeaux, France

Jean-Pierre Jouandet

 [ Merci Jean-Pierre!  I will place the images at the MMD Pictures
 [page,  http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/   -- Robbie