Arthur A. Reblitz - Player Piano: Servicing and Rebuilding

An original Standard Pneumatic Action Company factory worker adjusts the valves in a standard stack.

A typical advertising piece from the 1920s, issued by one of the most prominent manufacturers of player mechanisms for installation by piano builders. The player piano was an important sociological influence in the first 2 decades of the 20th Century.

PLAYER PIANO

... A treatise on how player pianos function, and how to get them back into top playing condition if they dont work

by Arthur A. Reblitz

VESTAL PRESS, Inc.

Published in the United States of America
by Vestal Press, Inc.
4501 Forbes Blvd, Suite 200
Lanham, Maryland 20706

Copyright 1985 Vestal Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reblitz, Arthur A.

Player piano servicing & rebuilding.

Includes bibliographical references () and index.

1. Player-pianoConstruction. I. Title. II. Title:

Player piano servicing and rebuilding.

ISBN 0-911572-41-40-6 (alk. paper)ISBN: 978-0-911572-40-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

ML1070.R4 1985

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

by Harvey Roehl

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Introductory Comments..

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General Description..

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Arthur A. Reblitz began restoring automatic musical instruments and arranging rolls for them in 1964, and opened his shop as a full time business in 1972. Since then, his shop has restored instruments for many prominent collections across the United States. A 1968 high honors graduate of the University of Illinois, Art is a registered tuner/technician member of the Piano Technicians Guild. His work has appeared on nationwide educational television, the 1987 National Geographic television special Treasures from the Past, Ripleys Believe It or Not, in the Rose Bowl Parade and Radio City Music Hall, and his music rolls have been used for promotional work for McDonalds, Anheuser Busch and Coca-Cola, among others. He has made numerous contributions to The Guidebook of Automatic Musical Instruments and The Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments by Q. David Bowers, and the Bulletin of the Automatic Musicial Instrument Collectors Association (AMICA), and he has written regular monthly columns for the Technical Bulletin of the Musicial Box Society International (MBS) and The Coin Slot magazine. He has also written for the Vestal Press Technical Series. In 1982 the author received the Q. David Bowers Literary Award from the Musicial Box Society International for outstanding literary contributions to the field of automatic music.

The author wishes to thank Bob Gilson, John Hovancak, Mike Kitner, Dave Ramey and Tom Sprague, for sharing their knowledge of automatic pianos and restoration techniques generously for many years, Harvey Roehl, for publishing all sorts of literature in the field of mechanical music, Durrell Armstrong, for making a wide variety of restoration supplies available over the years through his Player Piano Co. of Wichita, Kansas, and Fred H. Reblitz for proofreading the text.

Most of the disassembled player mechanisms pictured in this book were photographed during restoration. The authors full-time employees - Joseph Cossolini and Bob Grunow deserve special thanks for their willingness over a five-year period to bring their work to a halt, time after time at a moments notice, help set up photographic equipment, pose the pictures, and then resume working.

Thanks also to the following restorers and collectors who helped to make this book more complete by contributing illustrations and technical information: Terry Borne, Q. David Bowers, Jim Bratton, Larry Broadmoore, Craig Brougher, Ron Cappel, Jere DeBacker, Dave Gaudieri, Richard Groman, Randolph Herr, Rex Kennedy, Dick Kroeckel, Tom Marshall, Hayes McClaran, Jeffrey Morgan, Bill Pixley, Dave Saul, R.L. Schommer, Bob Taylor, Ross Waters, and Don Wick.

Piano Servicing, Tuning and Rebuilding, A Catalogue of Music Rolls for the Mills Violano, Treasures of Mechanical Music (with Q. David Bowers), and The Mills Violano-Virtuoso (with Mike Kitner).

The author provides a technical consultation service for a fee through the mail only, and he may be contacted by writing to him c/o the Vestal Press. This service is not available by telephone.

Player piano design and manufacturing is an 80-year old industry, but the art of restoring old player pianos to factory-new condition is a relatively new one. Most of todays restoration techniques didnt need to be considered by those who manufactured and serviced player pianos from the 1920s through the 1950s; they have been developed since the early 1960s, when old instruments became valuable enough to be worth restoring.

The information contained here is based on more than fifteen years of actual hands-on, full-time experience. From 1965 through the time this is being written in 1984, my employees and I have spent over 50,000 hours rebuilding, servicing and tuning a large number of instruments for private individuals and many well-known collections and museums. These instruments have included all varieties of player pianos, reproducing pianos, coin pianos, orchestrions, table top organettes, player reed organs and band organs, ranging in size from simple Gem roller organs to several immense, extremely complex Hupfeld Pan Orchestras. Many of the instruments which we have restored have been played tens of thousands of times per year in heavy commercial use, demonstrating which materials are the most long-lasting and which ones wear out prematurely. During this time, I have constantly tried to find the most efficient ways to do the most durable, airtight repairs which will preserve the authenticity of the instrument, while always putting special emphasis on making each instrument sound good.

Over the years many individuals, as listed in the acknowledgements, have shared their knowledge and experience, but one person in particular - Dave Ramey - deserves a great deal of credit for developing and sharing his methods of making pneumatic components work right. His restoration of pneumatic mechanisms has, to me, always been the finest example of airtightness and efficient operation. This book reflects his enthusiasm, as well as my own, for the careful preservation and restoration of automatic musical instruments. I hope at least some of our enthusiasm will rub off onto whoever reads this book!