•Joseph Osborne asked about his English Weber upright player. I remember that I once had an 88-note push-up Pianola and the board that had the decal said words to the effect that The Aeolian Company was based in New York and The Orchestrelle Company was their English counterpart. It also said the Ch...

•I hate to tune pianos, as many of the videos on my YouTube channel, AeolianHall1, will attest to. I use the Korg LCA 120 tuning machine, which is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it is a miraculous machine. Google it. For $70 or so, this is the best tuning machine in my opinion. I wanted...

•My friend, Ben Roth, and I want to thank all the people who responded to Ben's request for MIDI files of the Grieg Piano Concerto played by Percy Granger. Now Ben wants to know if anyone has MIDI files, or paper rolls, of Tchaikovsky's "Francesca di Rimini". Randolph Herr

•Hello, Gordon Stelter and MMD -- Just a week or so back, I bought two chemicals from Smooth On Company, in order to make new Pianola "P" pedal mats. Instead of paying $10,000 to have a mold made, I will make a mold from an original pedal. Then, with the second chemical which sets to a tough black r...

•Hi Gordon: I'm not all that familiar with the Standard pedals, but if there is a metal frame surrounding the rubber mat then it should be removed first. After all these years, I would be reluctant to try to separate the mats from the blocks, although soaking them in alcohol would soften and dissolv...

•Music scholar Dr. Tony Sheppard, writing in the New York Times, thinks an 1877 music box in the Guinness Collection may have provided Puccini with material for "Madame Butterfly" and also "Turandot": http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/arts/music/puccini-opera-echoes-a-music-box-at-the-morris-museum...

•Hi there, I just saw a 5-foot 4-inch Stroud Grand Duo-Art in very nice condition. I believe it could be made to work with little effort, if you know what you are doing. It comes with about 30 rolls, of which 8 or 9 were original Duo-Art rolls. It sounds to me that the seller is hoping for some mone...

•I just made a mold of a good Pianola pedal mat, and then cast myself two exact copies for a player piano I am going to feature on YouTube. It needed new pedal mats since I had worn out the old mats. This mat is the one with the beautiful letter "P" over a base that is an amazing optical illusion. I...

•Hello Lex: Last year, I had my friend Bob Streicher make up for me several roll chucks for 65/88-note pianos out of stainless steel, and I can sell you one. It is an improved design that should have been made years earlier. Basically, I had Bob make them so that the 88-note sleeve that goes over th...

•Today I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Foster White, the grandson of the Wilcox & White Company co-founder. He is trying to accumulate any information about this company. I told him of a Wilcox & White Angelus push-up piano player that I figured was still probably for sale a few years after I saw ...

•Does anybody out there have an original or a recut roll of Gershwin playing "Singin' The Blues"? He recorded it for the Aeolian Company under their Mel-O-Dee sub-brand in 1920 or so. It's really important to me as I need it for a video I am making about Aeolian Hall in New York, which was never rea...

•Hi, Bob, Yes, that piano is definitely worth restoring. I am surprised a piano of high quality would suffer such a disaster with the pinblock. Perhaps it has something to do with the European climate it was made for not liking the American climate. Perhaps it was kept in an ultra-dry space, causing...

•I came up with a new way of repairing rolls that I think is worth mentioning. I finally got a roll that I wanted to hear for several years, and as I played it, I realized the roll had been slashed while it was playing, and now it was unplayable. If a razor or knife had been used my job would have b...

•Hi there: I wonder if anyone out there has a part that came from an Aeolian Grand Pianola player piano. It could be from a Steinway, a Weber, a George Steck, or other brand. In any case, I am looking for the stack of primary valves that fit in behind the spoolbox, and was set just above the keys on...

•What is this stuff? A friend gave me a supply of pneumatic cloths and leathers that had been put away about 30 years ago and not touched since. Everything was in new condition, except for a folded rectangle of purple wine colored cloth, which was gray on the other side. The cloth had a sticky feel ...

•I am going to be playing my Steinway Pianola at the Museum of Arts and Design, in Columbus Circle, Manhattan, on March 14, 2013. The people behind the show have asked me whether I have any John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow, or similar composers on piano rolls. I do not, but I thought that writing to the ...

•In the 130107 MMD Vincent Thébault said: "I find that the touch weight of my Steinway Duo-Art OR is too heavy. I wonder if it's a 'common illness' of such piano or if there is a solution to have one with a lighter touch." Vincent, if you feel the touch is too heavy, there are many ways to change it...

•I am looking to buy some old Aeolian parts. The two things are 1. An Aeolian spoolbox that sat above the keys in the grands, and has the 88-65 note mechanism that Aeolian built in; 2. A Grand Duo-Art expression mechanism from before 1920 or so. Before then the expression mechanism was a two-piece u...

• Because of MMD, I recently became aware of one of the incredibly rare 9 1/2-foot Steinway ex-Duo-Arts that had recently turned up. After examining it, I found it to be in even better condition than I could reasonably hope for, and I bought it. The very worst thing about the piano is the condition ...

•I hired Ron Brewer to move the 9-1/2-foot-long Duo-Art Steinway I bought a few weeks back, and he is a great guy; I will be happy to use him again. He drives back and forth between the coasts, so if you need a musical instrument moved, you can probably fit in to his schedule. His telephone number i...