fish pole trackers

[William Bailer]

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

Richard,
Just throw the question up here, and you are SURE to get answers, but
try to provide the following information:
1. piano name
2. player action name if you can find it (sometimes in spool-box, on a
     corner of the fall-board, or on the pedals.
3. arrangement of holes in tracker bar
4. exactly how many holes in tracker bar
5. shape of holes in tracker bar (square, ractangle, trapezoidal, etc)
6. whether rebuilt
7. tubing to tracker (vinyl, grey rubber, black rubber, lead, etc)
8. description of the shape and style of dog-ears that contact the edges
     of the paper
9. type of tracking control mechanism: valve/pneumatic, direct
     mechanical (levers?), "wound-up cord", etc
10. what is moved to correct tracking: does one of the spools move, or
     the tracker bar itself?
11. What does the moving? 1 or 3 pneumatics, or mechanical drive from
     the air motor?
12. does it currently work at all?
13. are there two "dog-ears" or only one, and on which side?
14. is there literally a "fish-pole" evident-- a thing little lever
     that bobs back and forth with a cord that is wound around a small shank?
15. and any other unique features that may help us identify the action,
     stack design, controls, even logos or designs on the pedals

Bill Bailer

\\\  William Bailer                              wbailer@cris.com
\\\  Rochester, NY, USA                       phone: 716-473-9556
\\\  Interests: acoustics, JSBach, anthropology, piano technology