fish pole trackers

[Les Smith]

Hi, Richard.

I do a lot of work with player pianos-- about a dozen of them in my
shop right now, all customer's instruments. I have a fair amount of
expereience with mechanical trackers, both the one-eared and two-
eared variety. My opinion is that mechanical trackers, properly
adjusted, are more reliable than pneumatic trackers. Unfortunately
because of the ears contacting the edges of the roll, they can cause
wear problems when improperly adjusted. With the pneumatic trackers
you don't have to worry about damage to the edges of the roll, but
reliability can be a problem, especially if the owner doesn't pump
out the tracker-bar frequently. BTW the most frequently encountered
problem with a pneumatic tracker is blockage in the lines do to not
pumping out the tracker-bar. Some owners don't even OWN a t-b pump!
Anyway, if you want to post your question, either here or by e-mail,
I'll give it a shot.

Les Smith
lessmith@buffnet.net

On Sun, 13 Oct 1996, Richard m wrote:

>
>
> ----------
> Greetings
> 	From the Mechanical Music Digest a question has come up about ear
> activated fish pole trackers on player pianos.  Any player techs here with
> experience in this area?
> If its OK I would post the address of MMD here.
>
> Thank you for your consideration
>
> Richard Moody
>