•Over the years I have re-pouched plenty sets of pouches in Universal Pianos. Actually, just noticed the option wasn't on my new site. I will reiterate what I have said plenty times before. You cannot just purchase zephyr skin these days and cut pouches right from the raw material. The pouches will ...

•Hi All, I've developed a method of replacing the pouches in a Universal Player that has been exceedingly successful, and I've shared it with the world. See http://www.player-care.com/pouch-rings.html Musically, John A Tuttle Player-Care.com Brick, New Jersey, USA

•Bill is asking about others that have replaced these small pouches. I have done many of these with few problems overall. I would have thought that zephyr skin would be very hard to get a dish on the leather due to the small size of the plastic ring and the stiffness of the leather. I use thin pouch...

•From time to time the subject of the "Perflex" comes up on the group, and I'm certain that the are members who have never seen what happens to Perflex. I'm attaching a picture of some pouches that were made from Perflex, and to my understanding, lasted less than two years. This was put into a Seebu...

•Practically everyone in our field has heard of the nightmare that Perflex caused a few decades back. Basically, this new plastic film was touted as the perfect pouch material: it was perfectly airtight, perfectly flexible, and lasted forever. Well, reality reared its ugly head a few years later whe...

•I have a customer with a Ragtime Automated Music [RAM or "Ragtime West"] orchestrion from the 1980s. The build up unit was from the time most everyone it seems was "drinking the Kool Aid" of Perflex pouches. Several pouches are "blown" on the stack. The Ragtime website is recommending that everyone...

•[ Ref. Bill Maguire in 190205 MMDigest ] Sad to say, the Ragtime Automated Music stack uses a very brittle plastic, and was engineered as a "replace only" system. I have not heard of any successful rebuilds, although I could be mistaken! It is an interesting stack, very airtight when in good condit...

•Oops! When I mentioned I had bad pouch material I meant Perflex, not the Bilon which I used 30 years ago and it still going strong. I should never try to respond after 10 p.m. Bill Chapman - in La Quinta, Calif.

•Bill Chapman wrote in 131120 MMDigest: > Oops! When I mentioned I had bad pouch material I meant Perflex, > not the Bilon which I used 30 years ago and is still going strong. > I should never try to respond after 10 p.m. Don't feel bad, Bill! My bedtime is 9 p.m. If I'm not in bed, I'll fall asleep...

•Now that everyone seems to agree that urethane-coated nylon is long lasting and reliable, I will mention again that I have a lot of lightweight blue urethane-coated nylon of suitable weight for striker pneumatics. I will sell it at half the price that Schaff gets. Best regards, Spencer Chase Garber...

•Jeff Davis is correct that most Universal Players used Perflex pouches. At the time these were touted as "forever" pouches, not subject to the ills of leather pouches. Well, the company supplying the Perflex changed the formula from what was tested as the "prototype" and the results were disastrous...

•Yes, the pouches in these units are Perflex, which lasts several years and then fails all at once. I have restored a few of these. They require chrome-tanned leather replacements. The pouches are held down with PVC rings pressed into milled aluminum holes. They are fairly straightforward to replace...

•Ken, I suspect your organ player used Perflex pouches. If your valves work by pulling the valve stems, then the pneumatics are mostly okay. (They may also leak, though). I suggest you open the unit to see the pouches. If they are clear or translucent like surgical glove material, they will need to ...

•Randolph Herr said in his note, "The Curse Of Perflex," to the 05.05.06 MMD: > We have come a long way since then, scientifically speaking, and I > am certain that there must be a plastic film out there that will be > fine for pouches. If a plastic film could be found, then we would have > the perf...

•Hello all, I am presently rebuilding a Starr player that had a previous rebuild, maybe 25 years ago. I have found that the former rebuilder replaced all the pouches with Perflex. My question is: do any of you know whether Starr player actions used leather or pneumatic cloth for the pouches? There a...

•> In relation to the organ work I've witnessed, it's glued using PVC > glue, which is possibly why Mr. Bullock used the adjective "dreaded" > in his text (or was that because of it's close kinship to Perflex? ;). I used the term "Dreaded Polylon" because I have spent more time in the last 15 years ...

•In response to Larry Lobel's request for information on a Universal Player with a bunch of non-playing notes; I have encountered one Universal stack (in an orchestrion) and it had Perflex pouches in it. That might be the problem with yours, Larry. Mike Kitner

•Concerning this Ampico, I don't believe that Dan said if the piano had been restored, but if it was restored 20-25 years ago, there's a good chance that Perflex may have used in the player stack pouches. I know of a couple right here in town that have the same problem, and I know for a fact that Pe...

•Hi Bernt, I've run into numerous Wurlitzer block valves made by PPCo over the years. Everyone had failed because the Perflex pouch material had split or ripped open. This is a well-documented problem with Perflex, which was also encountered by Story & Clark when they were still Classic Player Piano...

•Hi Everyone, All I can say regarding any of Ragtime Automatic Music Company's (R.A.M.) systems that were installed 12 years ago or older is to replace all of the pneumatics, because all of the values are Perflex and the original casing is aluminum. Ken Calkins, the owner of Ragtime (http://www.ragt...