Player Piano care

     When I expanded my business by buying another tuning business I bought about 200 player piano customers.  I do not rebuild players but have the tooling and ability to maintain them.  A player piano is really two machines.  Many tuners when called by a player customer for a tuning will not tune them because you often have to take things apart in the player machine to get to the tuning pins and dod the tuning.  Players are fragile machines and it is very easy to damage something in the process of assembling or re-assembling these machines. When I do get a player that needs to be rebuilt I refer it to another specialist that does these rebuilds for me.
     Players work on suction rather than air pressure.  A player rypically developes leaks and begins to become harder to pump if it is a pumper and just run slower with notes of the piece not sounding.  Because it is not one leak but many in the heart of the mechanism there is no easy or cheap fix. Customers at this crossroad have to decide if they really want the player or just settle for the piano.  The player part can be removed and then you just have a piano without the player machine in the way of the tuning process and this is a service I provide more and more these days.
     The old mechanical players with the paper rolls are great fun and those that love them will spend the money to care for these great instruments.  I am seeing fewer player customers each year, however.  I get calls frequently from those wanting to sell a player and sometimes I can find these instruments a new home and sometimes I can't.  I do enjoy working on them and hope this part of my business does not someday cease to exist.