•Dear Vincent and friends, This is terrible news! I had known Randy for over 50 years. I am in total disbelief. Please let me know as soon as the details of the memorial service have been finalized. Though I won't be able to make it to the services myself, I will pass the information on to others th...

•I've been reading of Randolph's passing and it reminds me of the time I visited him at his home. His collection was incredible. I was shown record players I had no idea existed, with unusual "horns" for the music to be amplified through. One thing I wonder about, in reading all the wonderful commen...

•Hello everyone, last Thursday I met with Randy Herr's brother, Michael Herr, at Randy's house in Forest Hills, New York. Well, the bottom line is Mike needs help and suggestions on how to get rid of (i.e., sell, preferably, or give away) Randy's eclectic collection of grand pianos, Vorsetzer, quite...

•Dear Robbie, Thanks for posting my recent message about the Herr estate pianos [150831 MMDigest], but please do correct the note you put at the bottom, as per the status of this one instrument (and include a link to this video with Paul Manganaro, taken a month ago, if possible). As you can see, al...

•Dear Everyone, Regarding the alleged Hetty Green ("The Witch of Wall Street") custom art case Steinway "OR" in the Randolph Herr estate [150831 MMDigest], Ken Snowden kindly called to inform me that he knew the AMICA founding member who bought it out of an astonishing, "Newport-style" mansion that ...

•Regarding a recent post by Gordon Stellar about the Steinway Duo-Art pianos in the Randolph Herr collection [150921 MMDigest], I can offer a fuzzy recollection that may or may not be pertinent. When I bought my 5'8" Weber Duo-Art from Bill Edgerton in about 1986, I also purchased a collection of ab...

•Hello everyone, Randy Herr's brother, Michael Herr, is still trying to find people who are interested in Randy's stuff: players, rolls, antique cash registers, lamps, etc. He has the items visible on this website: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!AvLZW9XXCPI6L1o&id=2C01F9CA05D574AE!164&cid=2C01F...

•I agree with Gordon Stelter, it is a good idea to also have a qualified player piano technician look over the instruments and assess their condition before buying them [161007 MMDigest]. I service and restore pianos and player pianos for a living. I live about 45 minutes from the Herr collection. I...

•The (Alleged) Hetty Green Duo-Art Mystery Hi All, I've been helping Michael Herr discover "what's what" with the pianos he inherited from his brother, Randolph, especially the 9' Steinway Duo-Art (gutted), and the custom art case Steinway Duo-Art (gutted), that Randolph believed belonged to Hetty G...

•I would like to submit my own method for making new belly cloths for grand reproducing pianos. These things are frequently missing, and even if an original is to be found, it has usually shrunk enough so that it cannot be used as a template. My method seems like the fastest way to me. I invite comm...

•This message is in reply to Tom Steuer's question about "I Love A Piano" in the 1948 movie "Easter Parade" [000416 MMD]. I was sufficiently intrigued to rent the movie, and allow me to describe the scene: Fred Astaire is seated before a player, and asks Judy Garland if she is familiar with the song...

•The Hickman ball bleed valve is a remarkable answer to the problem that faces all designers of a single valve action: if you make the bleed too small, the repetition suffers, and if you make the bleed too big you lose the ability to play softly because the large bleed "eats up" the signal coming do...

•I am surprised at the paucity of writing about the Duo-Art test rolls. If you look in the MMD archives there is not even one solitary listing under Test Roll! Perhaps the dearth of writing is because many people do not even know they exist! Let me briefly describe them, moving in reverse order. - T...

•I would like to offer an idea concerning the performance characteristics of the Duo-Art Cross Valve. I have only recently thought of this idea, so anything I say here is only theory. Here goes: Start with a sheet of suitable material (such as Teflon) that is perhaps 3/32 of an inch thick. Make up 8...

•There are two types of Steinway salesmen: those who specialize in the larger model grand pianos, and those who specialize in the smaller model grands. It all came about because of the 1888 Steinway catalogue. At the end of this book is a full page describing all the different models available, show...

•In Mechanical Music Digest of Dec. 21, 1997, Dave Saul wrote about the connections between Aeolian, Mel-o-Dee and Gulbransen. I would like to add a strange little incident that happened between two of those parties: A friend had come across a Mel-o-Dee roll played by George Gershwin and mailed it t...

•Hi gang--here is a question: The copy of MMD dated 5/6/00 that I got on email has a request for 65 note rolls from a fellow in Spain. However, when I looked up the official articles in the Archives, this article is not there. I am aware that the very same article did appear a week or so earlier--ca...

•I thought of some funny stories the other day, and I thought that readers of MMD might get a charge out of them: An individual (who shall remain nameless) was negotiating with me a few years ago for the purchase of a rebuilt Steinway Duo-Art. Ultimately, this "thrifty" (ahem) individual decided to ...

•This is in answer to John Tuttle's article about piano finishes in 000520 MMD. A lot of the confusion is due to terms being used interchangeably. Shellac means only one thing: it is derived from the Lac bug, an insect native to India and its neighbors, I believe. It seems hordes of these bugs live ...

•As long as I am on the subject of finishing, I have two other little tidbits to share: 1. I recently found out the history of "Fumed Oak". It was at the back of a WW1-era book on furniture by the renowned Gustave Stickley. He explains that a farmer noticed that some raw oak planks he kept in a barn...