Niels Berkers asks about the chances of fitting an ex-Steck PEDA
[Pedal Electric Duo-Art] action into his gutted piano.  There a fair
chance that the stack might match the piano action, because there are
only a couple of piano models for British Steck Duo-Arts.  However,
transplanting between British (Hayes) and German (Gotha) Steck
instruments would be much harder because the pianos are different.

As far as I'm aware the piano case is the same for PEDA or Pedal-only
("half") [PDA] Duo-Art models, the only difference between them being
the type of expression box and ancillary equipment such as electric
motor and the rewind/repeat control gear.  The upper action of a PEDA
has four theme primary valves (one set for Duo-Art and the other for
Themodist), while the PDA has only two, but that's easy to fix: the
stacks are otherwise identical, and the spoolbox change-over switch
is capable of operating either model (or at least it was in the piano
I had).

In reality the PDA was often simply a Themodist piano with an
expression accordion fitted so that the accompaniment level would vary
automatically, so you could nearly as easily fit a PEDA works into an
ex-Pianola as into an ex-PDA.  You can even use Duo-Art expression
boxes to operate Pianola stacks, but the stack split is one note higher
in a Pianola so needs changing or else the middle E won't be accented,
and you would need to add a change-over switch to the spoolbox.

Julian Dyer