•I have never heard of a piano put together this way, but I have a suggestion that may help. Get one or two friends to help you tilt the piano onto its back. Now you can unscrew the very bottom panel, and possibly even the cross piece that has two notches in it for the Damper and Soft pedals. From h...

•In reply to John Farmer's query, my first player was a 65-note Steck with the action below the key board. Being inquisitive, I dismantled mine within a few weeks of acquiring it. I assume John just wants to make it lighter for removal and transport purposes; if so, I discovered on mine that the ent...

•The suggestion to remove the keybed, or key table, is perfectly sound. I have done this with a number of Stecks for removal purposes where clearances were tight. I have one word of warning: the piano will become violently back heavy as a result. Be extremely careful. Roger Waring - The Pianola Work...

•Many thanks to all those who replied to my query. The job is now done, thanks mostly to advice from Paul Camps who I also spoke to on the phone. After his MMD posting he remembered that his machine had removable cheeks. So the answer was quite simple. The cheeks are not glued in place but held by f...

•[ Roger Waring wrote in 060118 MMDigest: > The suggestion to remove the keybed, or key table, is perfectly sound. > I have done this with a number of Stecks for removal purposes where > clearances were tight. On the one we had -- though you could remove the cheeks (I believe you can do this on most...

•I have recently acquired a Fisher Ampico "Top-Loader" studio piano. I have restored other players and an Ampico, too, but can someone tell me the best method of removing the stack and spoolbox to access the piano action? It may save me a big headache. Thanks, Mike Kukral Terre Haute, Indiana ...

•I have removed top-loader actions often! 1. disconnect hose to the air motor; 2. label each small hose on each end that go to the expression mechanism. They usually go in order, but can easily be mixed up when replacing them. The order usually is: bass end: 1-B 2-B 3B 3T 4-B 6-B 7-B and a supply tu...

•Al Pebworth mentioned the use of a soldering iron to loosen screws locked in place by Super Glue. The soldering iron is a miracle tool for many things other than soldering electrical connections and joining metals together. When Joe Hanulec and I were faced with removing from our Wurlitzer Mandolin...

•Can anyone tell me how the tracker bar tubes are connected in the late Duo-Art grand pianos? It appears the hoses are divided in half and each half extend from the tracker bar to the ends of each side of the keyboard, and downward. I cannot see any way to disconnect them. Are they connected to a ju...

•Hi All, Removing the tubing in the (what I call) "wrap-around" Duo-Art upper section is an extremely easy task. There are two metal connectors (at the extreme right and left ends of the top action) that are held to two other metal connectors via a single leaf spring (on each side). Each spring is h...

•Hi all, I picked up a Universal Player Piano Company player piano and the pneumatics all fell apart because of the lousy glue. Now I am trying to rebuild the stack but the problem I am having is getting the old glue off. The only way it's been coming off is by sanding it, but that's taking too long...

•Hello Jeff and MMD, I hate to see PVC-E glue described as "lousy glue". I have not seen the use of it that Universal may have made, but PVC-E has many very desirable properties, and will (and has) lasted for many decades. Used in the wrong places it can create a mess for the next restorer. Used cor...

•I don't know if there are better ways, but I once had to remove a type of plastic glue from a Duo-Art stack. I borrowed a heat gun and heated the glue then scraped off the majority with a straight-edge knife. What was left after that I sanded. It was a hell of a task but it worked. I wouldn't recom...

•I use a product called "Parks Furniture Refinisher" available at the Home Depot and maybe Lowes also. "Furniture refinisher" contains alcohol, acetone and other solvents. It works great! There are other posts in the MMD Archives where people have recommended other techniques for removing PVC-E whic...

•Thanks to all who responded to my question. I found that some people didn't read the question too well -- I was removing glue from plastic pneumatics and not wood. But I thank you all for the suggestions that were sent to me. I will take them all to heart and if I ever get a stack that is wood I wi...

•I am chasing a cipher in my 1898 Orchestrelle and have not been able to figure out how to get the keyboard out of the instrument. I have the unit pretty well dismantled at this point but now I'm stymied. If any reader has had occasion to remove the keyboard from one of these units and has any trick...

•Maury, Be careful opening Pandora's box. The one thing that I can safely say about Orchestrelles is that there are almost as many differences between Orchestrelles as there are Orchestrelles. There are a few things I would say that may or may not help you track down the problem: 1. Does the cipher ...

•When I need to remove something attached with PVC-E or Player Piano Co. plastic glue, I use "3M General Purpose Adhesive Cleaner". I buy this product from an auto parts store at a cost of about $12.00 for a U.S. quart. I first used it to loosen old weather stripping from my 1960 automobile. It work...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- Howdy folks, I have just acquired a 1928 London Geo Steck 5'2" reproducing grand (Aeolian/Duo-Art) and have accepted the challenge of doing the rebuild myself, but I'm long on questions and short on answers and need to gather information before I...

•Dear M. Grady, A lot has been written about this subject; I'm just going over the basic steps for a refresher. The Duo-art system is delightful, but removing it from the piano is a major hassle. Photograph everything to make sure it's set correctly afterwards. The first thing that you will have to ...