Electramatic player

[Robert Goodale]

Clyde Hollinger wrote:
> 
> Friends:
> 
> A high school I service has in one of its practice rooms a 1977 Kimball
> "Artist Spinet" with a non-working Electramatic player.  Since I hate
> trying to tune looking over or under this thing, would it be wrong of me
> to suggest they let me remove the player action and chuck it?  Is there
> enough value in this PSO to try to keep everything intact?  I suppose it
> was a donated piano, and of course even without the player, it is what
> it is.  :-(

You might want to try to do a quick trouble-shooting before you do
anything. Sometimes these things will quite working only because a
single hose has slipped off or a switch has gone bad. Otherwise if the
piano itself is a PSO it won't be worth much more if the player did
worked. Who knows how much it would cost to repair this antiquated
thing? Who would want to at this point? One thing for sure, you won't
get any help from Kimball, let alone parts. My experience with these
1970's players has been anywhere from poor to worse in quality. Lots of
plastic parts that get brittle and break with age. They are noisy, they
shread music rolls because of lousy tracking mechanisms, and if you can
get them to play at all they break down again and again. Personally I
like old players, specifically those of decent quality from the 20's. In
this case, however, I would rip it out and chuck it as far as your
pitching arm will allow. Who knows, it might make some kind of
interesting music upon impact.  :-)

P.S., having said that, you might want to try salvaging a few parts,
i.e. the vacuum box, tracker bar, etc. They might come in handy someday.

Rob Goodale, RPT