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Chickering Duo-Art Grand
By D. L. Bullock

For Travis Martin's question:  That piano is a Chickering Duo-Art with
an Ampico B drawer, presumably to play the post merger Duo Art jumbo
rolls.  I can't tell whether it is a Duo-Art stack or an Ampico B
stack.  Both would have been winded from the ends in that era.  It is
covered with a narrow belly cloth like the B stacks were.

Yes, Travis, after the 1932 merger of Aeolian Corporation and American
Piano Company, there were Duo-Arts found in B drawers, under
Chickering, Mason Hamlin, Knabe and others.  There were also Ampico
B's found in Wheelock and other Aeolian pianos.  I have seen these
occasionally.  I have restored two Wheelocks with an Ampico B drawer
and stack, but with A mechanisms.

It is really fun to restore these post merger instruments as you can
get Ampico and Duo-Art parts, here and there willy-nilly, and when all
is assembled they all work together.  Over twenty years ago I saw a
large Mason, I believe in Houston, with a B drawer and a Duo-Art in it.
It had a separate box with Ampico spoolbox and mechanism so the piano
could play both Ampico and Duo Art rolls.  I wonder if someone here
still has that piano.

D.L. Bullock    St. Louis
www.thepianoworld.com


(Message sent Tue 24 Feb 2004, 01:58:24 GMT, from time zone GMT-0600.)

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