•Hi All, Roger Waring asks about vacuum sensors that can monitor a specific vacuum level and then send a signal to a device which will control the speed of a 240 volt A/C motor that produces the vacuum needed to operate a player piano. All fine and good, but it seems to me that he needs to establish...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- Dear fellow grinders and organ friends, Recently I've got a tuning device on my PC that works perfectly to tune my Carl Frei organ. I've worked a lot with analogue tuners in the past but they never seemed to function properly. Some time ago I rec...

•Hi, My hot glue pot has a short circuit that shorts the power to the ground when I apply voltage. I still use it, but I found a much simpler device that's also perfect for use: an electric fondue pot, thermostatically controlled, and the advantage is that I can either use it with water and a small ...

•[ Derry Fishel wrote in 040805 MMDigest: >> My problem concerns a Deleika hand-cranked (paper rolls) barrel >> organ that we purchased new when we visited Germany in 1989. The >> bellows or some other related device appears to have sprung a leak >> in the pneumatic system but we cannot find a way t...

•I have an unidentified wind motor for a player piano. It was removed from a home-made pipe organ player device. I have a photo available to e-mail to interested parties. I'd like $5 for my trouble and postage, which should be another $7 or so to the lower 48 states in the USA. Damon Atchison http:/...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- I am the owner of an Aeolian upright player piano, style 551 p. The tracking device is currently working, however it is not "tubed up" as it was originally. My player piano technician does not understand exactly how it works; he believes it may b...

•Hi, This is in response to Andrew Springman's post about the recent upsurge of interest in the iPod ittyMIDI Player [041210 MMDigest, MIDI & Mechanical Music Instruments]. I am not familiar with the iPod device. I have used a SD35 Roland MIDI player for my automatic glockenspiel with great results...

•Robbie, you should see that new Disklavier. It also records your playing better than any MIDI device I have ever had in my hands. I have over 40 keyboards, from Yamaha, Korg, Roland, Kurzwiel, etc., in the rental fleet. They all record MIDI the same. The Yamaha Disklavier records it better. The new...

•Robbie said to Pat DeWitt on this subject (050102 MMDigest): >[ How much are you willing to pay? There are a few such machines >[ in this world, but the owners must be convinced that you need the >[ device more than they do. Ten or fifteen ten years ago a completely >[ restored 88-note Themodist/Me...

•I think what is needed here is calipers, not a micrometer. A micrometer is the "C" clamp shaped measuring device. It is far more accurate that you would _ever_ need for valve regulation. Calipers will work just fine. Also, a micrometer is built for measuring thickness; it is not well suited for mea...

•Hi All, By chance does anyone have a manual for a Model "A" Pratt-Read player action? Don Teach sent me a picture of a 1917 Pratt-Read tracking device, which I now know was used in the Model "A". He also sent a drawing of a Pratt-Read stack, which also appears to be from a Model "A". A young man in...

•Hi all, I am looking for a grand modulator for a Duo-Art. The grand modulator is the device installed before the expression box to limit the loudness of the piano. Regards Mario Solimbergo in Italy

•Hello MMD readers, Back in 1999, I posted a history of presenting the player piano as a playback device along the lines of audio. To make a programmed mechanical musical instrument into a phonograph type of device is a musical impossibility, but it was an effective marketing campaign for the reprod...

•Dear MMDers, I would like to explain the further schedule of the International Karakuri Contest in which some MMDers are participating. The Japanese word "karakuri" means basically "mechanical device." The origin of Japanese robotics is in the karakuri, which flowered from the 17th century to the m...

•I have examined several very early (ca. 1915-1921) Wurlitzer band organ roll masters and many late ones (1940-1967). There is no evidence suggesting that anything like a "recording organ" or a device similar to the ingenious arranging piano that J. Lawrence Cook used at the QRS factory was ever use...

•Hi All, A year ago this past week I posed a question in the MMDigest (040711) about the purpose of the key lock device that's found in most (American-made) upright player pianos. Looking back at the responses to my query, it's seems everyone agreed that the practical purpose of the device was to im...

•Hello MMD! This is a blatant self-serving message to sell something. Over the last couple years I have developed a piano roll repair device that works better than I had ever anticipated. My hope was to get this device as widely disseminated as possible so that piano rolls that might otherwise be th...

•Dear MMDers, The final competition of the International Karakuri Contest (IKC) will be held at the 2005 Expo in Aichi prefecture, Japan, on 18th September 2005. "Karakuri" means the mechanical device in Japanese. See http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/karakuri1.html The following contestants have pass...

•Mark Kinsler refers us to the fact that overhead power lines are prone to wind excited vibrations, and these are damped by a device adjacent to each end of each length of cable. One piece of useless information that has stayed with me since my university days is that this device is called a Stockbr...

•Having obtained some 3/8-inch wide braided elastic rubber, I have started using this around my "O" rolls. To the want of a better device, I have joined together the band with two staples, and then using pliers to crimp a little more, but not too much. The tension of the elastic is just adequate to ...