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I acquired a Fisher grand piano with an Ampico A player in it that was
supposedly all restored.  The piano action and cabinet appears to be
a fine piece of work but the player portion has never worked very well.
Being retired and an engineer with a smattering of experience with
ordinary player piano as a youth, I decided to see if I could find out
what is going on.

It appears that all pneumatics have been recovered and all hoses are
new, but the piano just does _not_ play very loudly at all unless
I hold down on the manual expression buttons.  Only then will it play
rather loudly.  No change when turning off the Ampico or playing
regular 88-note rolls.  Some vacuum measurements at the tracker bar
indicate 19" on bass or treble side with the switch in Medium.  In
Subdued I get 11" on both sides but in Brilliante setting I get no
change from 19".  Seems that is the maximum it will produce.  I tried
to increase the spring tension on the spill valve a bit but it has no
effect on the 19" vacuum reading.

I did find that both long bolts at the ends of the stack were loose
and I tightened them up a bunch before I started to take any vacuum
readings and the piano _did_ get much louder, leading me to think that
I simply have leaks, but the overall condition of this piano makes it
a heartbreak to think I have to re-restore it when everything appears
fairly new.  I have had the piano for 10 years and it may have played
slightly better when we first got it.

Are there any measurements I can take or tests I can perform to further
locate what might be the issue?  Thanks in advance.

John Regan
St. Charles, Illinois