Virtual Tour Step

Upper Player Action
Dismantling

Here is a view of the upper player action completely intact. Notice a few things about this stack. It is a Standard player action. It has 3 tiers or 3 rows of striker pneumatics. It has lead tubing that is still undisturbed but in need of replacing. Notice on the far end see the blue "Stuff" this is where someone in the past had tried to fix'er up. I think the material is shower curtain and it had been glued on with contact cement. You can also see where someone has also tried to fix the cracks in the plastic with duct tape. The amazing this about this unit was that when you applied enough vacuum the unit would still play.

Here is a view of the upper action with the head removed. The head consists of the wind motor, spool box, transmission, and tracking unit all of which is mounted on a removable board. Now we have left on the table the "stack" which contains the striking pneumatics, finger rail, primary and secondary valve chests and the main vacuum chamber. All these units are made of wood and are screwed together with leather gaskets in between the joints.

Here the primary valve chest and the "L" channel board have been removed leaving only the pneumatic decks and the secondary valve chest. If you are wondering what the white things on the back of the striker pneumatics are well, when the leather nuts use to hold the connecting linkage to the pneumatics would crumble I would use twist ties to temporarily secure them. Let it be known that I do not advocate this as a lasting fix.

Now all the leather nuts and twist ties have been removed and the connecting rods have been lifted out of the way. Next the whole finger rail will be removed.

See the book? Wondering what it is? It is Art Reblitz book titled "Player Piano Servicing And Rebuilding." I used it so much the old binding came loose and I had to rebind it. I used a spiral type binding so it would lay flat.

Here is a view of the pneumatic decks. As stated earlier this is a 3 tier stack and now you can clearly see the 3 tiers. This is what the unit looks like after the secondary valve chest has been removed. Also notice the little baby food jars lined up on the back of the table. There are literally hundreds of screws that have to remain separated and there jars work wonderfully.

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