Dear Mr. Ball and other friends on the Mechanical Music Digest,
this letter is in response to Mr. Harold Ball's questions in the
MMDigest of September 4, 2026, about the Marque Ampico and the
availability of tubing diagrams.

I am 86 years old and cannot do much physical anymore but I did
restore a 1924 Foster Marque Ampico in the early 1980s. I received
the piano completely disassembled with most of the components
stored in unlabeled boxes. The previous owner was deceased and not
able to verify what I was purchasing.

The Marque Ampico came in several flavors but all of them were foot
pumped and did not have a motor driven pump system. Many, if not most,
used conventional Model A expression mechanisms. Mine, like some
others, did not. Mine has no crescendo pneumatics, the crescendo
being accomplished by several various sized bleeds on the input side
of the expression pneumatic. Also, there is no "spring" pneumatic
but rather a real mechanical spring.

My piano also has a transposing tracker bar, unusual in a reproducing
piano; a pneumatic with an indicator presumably to help maintain
a constant vacuum while pedaling; a pneumatic on top of the spool
box connected to the off/on switch; and an automatic cutout assembly
which is quite different from the normal Ampico device. I determined
that this cutout block was to cut off all the expression coding when
the tracker bar was moved to any position other than the center.

This cutout block had many of the hose connections labeled such as
3B, 2T, 4T, etc. Some of these markings were on little plastic rings
on the ends of the hoses. I found these on both the cutout block as
well as the expression devices and they went a long way toward helping
to figure out the tubing connections.

To restore a Marque Ampico I suggest that you obtain the following
materials if you can get them. (I sure miss the Vestal Press and the
Player Piano Company.) You might put out a request on this list or
on eBay:

Ampico Inspector's Reference Book, 1923
Ampico Model A Grand Tubing Chart
Amphion (Accessible) Player Action

The Amphion book covers the pumping bellows that are used on the
Marque Ampico. It also has some information on the pneumatic stack
which was used although the Marque Ampico stack was divided internally
to a bass half and a treble half. These are then provided with vacuum
that is regulated by the expression devices for the bass and treble
respectively.

The air motor, governor, reservoir cutout, valves, pneumatics, etc.,
are all straightforward Amphion parts. (Amphion went on to make all
the Ampico parts and was later bought out by the American Piano
Company). The buttons and levers are all normal player piano stuff.

Today, my piano is still in the family residing with my son in
upstate New York. That is about 1200 miles from me in Florida. I took
a few photographs in the early days but I'm not in a position to take
anything apart at this point.

Which brings us to the question you asked as to whether anyone has
made a tubing chart for the Marque Ampico. As I was analyzing and
restoring this piano, I took many notes and drew a number of tubing
diagrams for it. I looked the other day and I still have these notes.
There are 25 pages of them.

I have no problem copying them but I am not sure how to transmit them
to you. My email is Google and it limits the amount of data I can
attach to an email note that I would send. If worse comes to worse,
I could mail you hard copies of these pages. I am open to suggestions.

With kindest regards,

Robert (Bob) Conant
Bradenton, Florida
tel.: 1-941-792-2701
bobconant2@gmail.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]