pianotech-digest V1997 #391

[Les Smith]

Hi, Jim.

That's a really thoughtful offer--seriously. Many non-player technicians
would just toss them without giving the idea a second thought. At the
same time there are player technicians out there who would sometimes give
their eye teeth for a missing part that's been out of production for 75
years or so. 

With regards to those parts, you have a couple of options. First of all,
if you're removing orphane parts from pianos that come in for work, it's
probably a good idea to label all the player parts you remove as to what
brand of piano they came from, assuming that you're unable to identify the
player mechanism, itself. In most cases the piano compnay did NOT build
its own player mechanism, but out-sourced it instead. Keeping track of
what parts came from what piano will nevertheless help identify the player
mechanism because most pianos only used one or two different mechanisms.
It also might be a good idea if you could make a list of what parts you
have--air motor, tracking mechanism, spoolbox, pumping bellows, etc--
as well as what pianos they came from, or what type of player mechanism
they came from (if you know it).

Once you have a list of what you have, you have a couple of choices. One,
you could check the yellow pages in your for player technicians, contact
them and let them know what have available. Two, you might post back here
and let interested techs write you for a copy of the list. And three, you
might post to the Mechanical Music Mailing list, indicating that you have
parts available. Lastly, it's probably a good idea to let everyone know
where you're located. I hope this helps.

Les Smith
lessmith@buffnet.net

On Mon, 15 Dec 1997, james turner wrote:

> I get old player parts in from time-to-time, can anybody use them for
> the postage?
> 
> Jim Turner
> 
> Piano & Reed Organ Shop
>