•I had my Chickering Ampico restored and had one of Bob Hunt & Herb Lindahl's Virtual Roll systems installed. Since I use Android mobile devices I wanted to use them to control the Virtual Roll rather than a PC or an Apple product which I believe several people have done. For the benefit of others w...

•[ Ref. 170225 MMD, Seek Octet UM0 Universal MIDI Interface MMD The Octet products designed by Laurent Coray in 1996 are difficult to repair as the 68HC11D0 microcontroller is hard to find now. Here is a list of vendors of similar MIDI decoder devices, including several listed at http://miditoanythi...

Bob Essex made a recent posting about requiring a simple MIDI to parallel converter for a roll punching machine. I have recently finished building such a converter, which has 32 outputs, each capable of driving 35 Volts and 0.5 Amps. Any output can be configured to operate from any MIDI note number ...

•A fascinating photograph was recently auctioned on eBay (a friend of mine was the winning bidder). It seems to depict some type of prototype for a player/reproducing piano mechanism, possibly a recording device. Any information or speculation about the subject of this photograph would be most welco...

•This seems to be a class at a piano tuning or player technician school (perhaps the Standard Action School). The teacher is pointing to an action model. Above him is a Standard Action player stack. The model in use by the teacher seems to show one upright piano note with it's player mechanism. The ...

•Hi Larry and MMD readers, I viewed the photo at the MMd web site. I think this is a photograph from one of the instruction seminars hosted by The Standard pneumatic action company. Standard attempted to educate the piano tuners about the workings of the player action. They held these seminars all o...

•Hi everybody: Now I'm trying to put in working condition a Carlton Wurlitzer player piano, so I'm asking if somebody can explain to me how works the mechanism of the top action which allows that the roll doesn't move to the left and the right, so the perforations can go exactly to the hole of the t...

•L. Carthon seeks (010207 MMDigest) "an external piano playing device which plays the piano without any physical attachments to the piano itself." By "physical attachments" I assume L is talking about things screwed or permanently attached to the instrument. It's difficult to conceive of a piano bei...

•As many are probably aware, one of the more common Duo-Art tracking devices contains the familiar double pneumatic which has a supply nipple, along with two nipples which hook up to a cut-out pouch block on top of the theme box, and which then are routed, through tubing, to the treble and bass trac...

•Barry, Take a look at the pictures at the link below and see if this is similar to what you have. Also, are there paper edge sensing holes in your tracker bar? Again see pictures at the link below. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/9374/stroud/stindex.html I have a few more comments, but I'm...

•Sam Harris invited me to look at the photos of his Stroud Duo-Art upright concerning my inquiry about the early Steinway grand Theme box which apparently contained tracker pneumatic valves. I viewed those photos and want to thank Sam for responding to my inquiry. While the configuration of the upri...

•Hi Al, I have a number of Lauter-related information and diagrams at the Player-Care web site, see: http://www.player-care.com/gifs/lautrtrk.gif Front view, tracker device http://www.player-care.com/gifs/lautback.gif Back view, tracker device http://www.player-care.com/lauter.html General tubing di...

•Late style Lauter players often incorporated a locking device on the upper right hand spool chuck. This device was to stop the roll motor from turning while using Lauter's own tracker bar cleaner. In these late Lauters you will find a hole on the upper left hand of the spool box and a felt lined ho...

•Hi All, Paul Manganaro is the only person I know of who ever figured out exactly what all the 'mystery' holes are in the Lauter-Humana. I have found parts of the tracker bar cleaner in one or two Lauters but I never had enough parts to 'put it all together'. Thanks Paul! This past weekend after bei...

•[Ref. "Electromagnet Oscillator Excites Piano Strings"] Mike Knudsen wrote: > On a related topic, I've seen pictures of a German "Geigenwerk", > or keyboard violin, looking like a piano, but each key completed > a wooden linkage between its string and a revolving cylinder covered > with rosin. No i...

•I have a 1917 Norris & Hyde upright piano with an Air-O-Player 88-note player action to refurbish. It's the kind with the modular metal valve and pouch assemblies that look like little silver HO scale locomotives. The piano is in reasonably good shape, and all original. I'm hesitating to take the j...

•Season's Greetings from a very wet UK! I have been using a PC (in conjunction with the VanBasco software Karaoke) to run Bob Hunt's Virtual Roll system that is installed into my Duo-Art but I'd like to use a Tablet PC or Android based device. I'd also like to drive the system wirelessly. Has anyone...

•In 121227 Mechanical Music Digest, Steve Greatrex asked about USB MIDI Drivers for Android Devices. This does not answer his question directly, but I can offer a comment on the general issue of driving MIDI mechanical instruments with smaller devices. I'm moving toward a MIDI driven system in a fut...

•Robbie remarked regarding the Auto-Namic [170611 MMDigest]: [ Found in "Music Trades", Volume 62, Dec. 11, 1921, page 11: [ "The Auto-Namic, the company claims, governs and changes air [ tension with one pneumatic and has but one moving part, has no [ change of spring tension, and is installable in...

•Don't forget to thoroughly degrease the friction parts including the disc and the non-metallic "shoes" that ride on it. No part should be sticky or gummy or greasy lest the tracker not work properly. I use lacquer thinner and a small, stiff brush to degrease the components. I like to clean the enti...