•Yes, I am Moving my shop to a larger building where I can at last combine my restoration facilities with my woodworking operations. For a few years now I have been doing the woodworking out of my new home as it was under construction. This limited the amount of work I could do. As there was no clim...

•Since I am not in the retail business the war has not effected me in that way, but the amount of restoration jobs that has come in over the past two months has been phenomenal, more than I have ever had in that space of time. Surprisingly most of them are Ampico units: two Marshall and Wendell upri...

•Hello! I'm working on an upright piano with Duo-Art reproducing action. The motor appears to have originally hung from leather straps but in this piano it's simply resting on the bottom board of the case! It's an Electric Specialty Co. Type B112 1/8 hp 1150 RPM motor with a 1-5/8" O.D. double pulle...

•John Haskey inquired about the motor mounting in his upright Duo-art. I've enclosed some photos of my Stroud Duo-art. The rear of the motor is suspended with a thick strap mounted on pegs secured to the base of the piano. The front is suspended with adjustable straps; see the photos. The belts used...

Would anyone know if a company has ever come out with the song " A Night on Bald Mountain " on piano roll ? I talked to Dan Wilke at QRS and he's never seen it. Well there are a lot of rolls that he hasn't seen, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. Jason P.S. - How about the 1812 Overture ? ...

T'was before sunday and all through the shop¶ Goatboy was busy with broom and a mop¶ The task was so endless, cause after some time¶ the benches were cluttered with rubbish and grime¶ He gathered it all into one great big clump¶ and ended up making two trips to the dump¶ far from done was this terri...

•My family recently took a little vacation to Stone Mountain in Georgia. There we (I) found an Antique Car and Treasure Museum. Inside were 30 jukeboxes, 22 player pianos, and 6 Band Organs. All of these were in ?playable? condition. Needless to say I entered with a handful of quarters. All of the m...

•I once traveled to Stone Mountain to see the musical museum there. After paying to get into the museum I was surprised to find out that I had to put as much as .25 to $1 in each and every machine. I was still excited to hear some of the larger organs play. After putting the coins into a large dance...

•While in Switzerland we hiked and climbed from Zermat to the top of Mt. Gornergrat to get a good look at the Matterhorn. We were so smug as we reached the top with our light packs and gear, only to find that two brothers from Lugano had set up a little Limonaire fairground organ at the very top. Th...

•I have a customer who asked me to fix the Ampico player on his Chickering. He paid someone else to rebuild it. The owner finally had his lawyer write this person the piano was finally delivered a couple of years late. The "rebuilding" is interesting. On the pump, two bellows were recovered by teari...

•The thread on "Flamin' Mamie" brought a rush of memories from long ago. In the 1940s our family would go to the family ranch late each summer, just as deer season started. The ranch is in the California Coast Range Mountains in Mendocino County, 12 miles over a dirt county road, then another 1/2 mi...

•I happened to stop in a Hallmark Card Shop this past week and they have an interesting ornament for this holiday season. It is called "Circus Mountain Railroad". There is a 3-car circus train which you can make go forward or backward with a control knob. Above that there is a rotating carousel, and...

•Several years ago I fabricated a set of blocks from sheets of 1/2-inch rubber which I glued together to the appropriate thickness. Once they were glued together I cut them to size and shape on the band saw and then drilled the holes through them on the drill press. Since they are held in place by t...

•I can help Tony Pignaloni with the request for rubber blocks for Ampico motors. Nowadays, there are countless dozens of rubber-like compounds that can be used to mold new blocks. I live in New York City and I go to "The Compleat Sculptor" in lower Manhattan. Their web site is http://www.sculpt.com/...

•Hi, About the electric motor or pump mounting blocks. They are available from Bob Streicher in Pond Eddy, New York. His phone number is 1-570-559-7403. The last time I ordered them the price was about $16.00 for a set of 4. He also makes a lot of other Ampico parts. As far as Svoboda's collection i...

•The following applies only to RTV type rubber such as that sold by hobby shops or sculptor stores. I tried making Ampico rubber mounting blocks and some of the ones I made worked out great while some did not. I no longer offer them but I can give some advice. The rubber should not be mold-making ru...

•The auction of Protsman's Antique Automobile and Treasure Museum in Stone Mountain (near Atlanta), Georgia, on March 21 & 22 caught my interest because it is extremely rare to see such an extensive offering of mechanical music items at one time. And of course I was curious how these economic times ...

•I did not attend the recent auction in Atlanta, Georgia, and I was in hopes that those that did attend would give a report on the instruments that sold of interest to the MMD group. I talked with two of the attendees and both gave reports that I think should be passed on to the MMD group. In short...

•I have just finished restoring the player action of a Seeburg L, and repaired the Holzer-Cabot motor that came with it. However, the piano was working on a modern motor when it arrived, and the Holzer motor does not have the usual spring-mounted adjustable mounting, just a flat steel plate with two...

•Hi, Can anyone tell me what the equivalent product in the USA is for Evo-Stik Glue? I believe Evo-Stik is used in England but I cannot find a cross reference for it anywhere. The reason I ask this is three years ago I built a 30-key Alan Pell Modular Organ for my band organ project. The instruction...