Robert Perry asked in 030720 MMDigest:

> Hi all,  Just wondering if anyone knows anything about the Eavestaff
> Autopiano of London, and have any comments about it at all?  I have
> been offered one, and couldn't find anything at all on the MMD web
> site or even a Google search.

Eavestaff were a fairly good but very ordinary upright, not unlike the
Hopkinson.  The Autopiano action was a slightly superior version of the
Standard player action, meaning that it didn't actually seize up or
warp irreversibly after a few years.  It had fixed-subduing "Solodant"
(like a poor man's Themodist, using the same theme perforations)
switched on with a fiddly little lever, with override treble and bass
buttons for manual accenting.

Nowadays we judge them pretty uninteresting machines, but dammit, for
many people it was that or nothing.  If you bought one you went to your
grave never knowing how responsive and educative foot-blown players can
be -- and let us be fair, maybe that would never have mattered to you.

I wasn't introduced to variable-subduing Aeolian five-lever Themodist
until I was 34!  Suddenly, real piano music flooded in on me!  I was
no longer a walking corpse!  I could have died and never known!

I must pull myself together.  Button pianos are fine for some uses.

Dan Wilson, London (in curmudgeon, or anyway Aeolian copywriting, mode)