I've been perusing this digest for some time now and feel it is time to introduce myself. I'm a member of the Piano Tuners Guild (PTG) and specialize in restoring players. I have a data base of over 1100, ranging from ones I've only made estimates on, to major restorations. I use PVC-e glue on nylon...

Several centuries ago (you can check the history books) the Jesuits pushed up from Mexico into the great northern deserts where they had followed the stories of the seven cities of gold. There being scant gold, but fertile ground for religious conversions, Father Kino made quite a loop and stopped l...

•Hello to all my friends out there who are probably wondering where I have been since I received my email address last August and to all of you I haven't met yet. I won't go into all my reasons for not introducing myself sooner except to say I have been lurking as so many others. Secretly, I was wai...

•Whew! I just got in this morning (4:30 am) from the Miles Extravaganza. You people are ANIMALS!! Just kidding. But seriously folks! The bidding was fast and furious. There were lots of bargains, lots of reasonable retail prices and lots of reasonable wholesale prices. But there were also those pric...

•Hal Davis' hilarious essay about the automatic roll tearing devices and the Standard Player action's "four-eyed monster" was about all I could stand for one morning. That's some really good stuff. But it really gives a person pause to consider disabling his own tracking mechanism, and I'd seriously...

•The conversation between Hal Davis and Robbie Rhodes regarding magnet force is interesting to me, too. Jeff Borinsky and I discussed it privately, and we had a very interesting and enjoyable discussion, too. A savvy guy. I have to take Hal's side on the voltage issue, since I know that magnets and ...

•Colin Hinz was wondering: 1. > Question: Were the failures, that were experienced with Polylon > and hide glue, gradual failures or immediate failures? The failures of bonding appeared (to me, at least) immediately. If you will take some compressed air, regulate it to 25-30 lbs pressure, put a rubb...

•Hi Jo Ann, you wrote: > Hi John, I appreciate a couple of minutes of your time. > I have a question or two. I'll apologize in advance as I know these > are probably simple questions but I want to study players and know > what I'm getting into. In other words, I don't want to put the cart > before t...

•Greetings! My name is Dan Tracy and I have been a member of MMD for only a short time. My interest in mechanical music is primarily in music boxes and I stumbled across MMD purely by accident while doing a web search for Reuge musical movements. I happened to "hit" one of the archive pages and like...

•The museum Helmut Kowar writes about is a wonderful old home of the bourgeois banker, Jakob Geymueller, built circa 1808. This home has many rooms open to the public that are furnished faithful to that time period. It is located west of the old historic first district in an area called Poetzleinsdo...

•Hello everyone, Could you help us figure this thing out. We have a Becker Bros. player, serial #48615 circa 1916, in for complete restoration, and we're having trouble figuring out what that mysterious mechanism is in the bottom of the spool box. In fact, the whole action upper and lower is one tha...

•> I wonder you can be of any help to me. I own a Tanzbaer roll playing > accordion which works on the principle of the pianola with a small > paper roll. I have, in vain, been trying to find out more details > about this instrument but have not been successful. I wonder whether > you might be able ...

•John Chiffer is looking for a Gulbransen player piano rebuilder. Piano World, in St. Louis, Missouri, restores Gulbransens but is _not_ the thoughtless rebuilder mentioned in other posts. We would never consider rebuilding any player stack without the piano present. That is simply irresponsible. A ...

•I was chatting with Frank Himpsl tonight regarding his amazing expertise in identifying 65-note A, G and 4X rolls. I explained to him that for many years I would visit Disneyland in Anaheim and venture into the General Store on the corner of Main Street, USA. Hidden in a small room off to the side...

•-- forwarded message, please reply to sender and MMD -- Cynthia Craig wrote of the Steam & Organ rally at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, on Labor Day weekend. Anyone traveling to that organ rally and steam show might like to make a week's trip out of it and take in the Band Organ Rally 2000 at the Pioneer Pow...

•I have been reading some good comments about protecting old rolls. John Rutowsky's comment about the Baldwin tracker was also accurate. I was about to offer that one, myself. But the comment I haven't seen in print yet is, "What is the best way to begin when playing an old roll that hasn't been pla...

•Yes, I am Moving my shop to a larger building where I can at last combine my restoration facilities with my woodworking operations. For a few years now I have been doing the woodworking out of my new home as it was under construction. This limited the amount of work I could do. As there was no clim...

•I attended the Carousel Organ Association of America rally in Franklin, Pennsylvania, this weekend, and it was great. I don't know if anyone else will be writing in about it, but I wanted to send my praises. Thanks to the folks at DeBence Museum for a job well done. There were about sixteen band or...

•Introduction -- I always liked to design and make myself any kind of mechanisms and electrical and electronic equipment. Starting at the age of nine I have been making radio receivers, transmitters, electric vehicles, hi-fi equipment, etc., and especially, musical instruments, including pipe organs...

•Hi all: I am catching up on about 10 days of MMDs so this observation is a little late. I have a different take on rebuilding a player in a customer's home. Because I do not have time to do rebuilding as a business, myself, I have acted as a consultant to (hopefully) _technically qualified_ player ...