#ohsit Thanks for watching! Music: Supertone 10013 Dill Pickles Rag, US 45145 Furniture Man Blues, QRS 3368 Just Around the Corner, QRS 32589 Honky Tonky, QRS 8097 Cement Mixer, QRS 6983 played on a 1917 Autopiano upright player piano.
The metal thingy is one of those things which you can stick in the top of a book to hold the pages open. It probably has a name that's not " Book-holder-opener-thingy"?
@Nate Otto - Outside the Vacuum Yes! Great for hymnals and other books prone to slamming shut or flipping pages in the middle of a performance. It's called a Kibcoh page holder. Once again, wonderful videos. If you do any reproducer work, please let me know.
Dang man…. This was an awesome series. I really love seeing younger people taking up older professions like this, gives me hope that maybe some of the neat machines and techniques of the past will be preserved into the future. Great work.
I have an Overton piano bench where the top flips around to either a flat side or an angled leather cushion side. Very fun, even if it sacrifices storage in the seat.
I saw a link to the first part of the series on Reddit, and I got hooked and watched through the whole thing. My husband has been teasing me the whole time because I've been so entranced by the videos. I am so determined to watch this thing play!
I'm probably missing something but my gut feeling is that the swing-up tilt mechanism would be prone to falling down. The pickles would be very resistant to this.
The pickles bit baffled me as I was sure there was a joke in there - thanks for explaining it, I'd have melted trying to figure out the joke. Most enjoyable Nate, thank you very much.
Extra parts for half and fully gutted players can sometimes be found in rebuilders’ bonepiles, but matching them with the right piano can be problematic. Big player action makers like Standard and Simplex who supplied many of the piano builders by the 1920 era, modified their basic design to conform to the scale requirements of each individual piano make/model in terms of the geometry. So for example, while piano action part spacings / wippen spacings were by then more or less standardized, the action breaks (big spaces where the metal piano action brackets are in the middle) are not universal, and neither are the spacings at the left and right sides inside the piano cabinet from the edge to where the first and last wippen are. So any old Standard or Simplex (etc) stack won’t do; it will need to be one for that make and model piano with the proper spacing. That is the problematic with retrofitting stacks. However, nearly all other missing parts (“head” with spoolbox and wind motor; lower unit including the pumping pedals etc) can be adapted with more or less success as the geometry is not as critical in most cases (rare early actions with pumping pedals that slide out from below, rather than fold down from the center, are an exception). Player parts can be found in most rebuilders’ bonepiles (what Nate calls his “above ground landfill”) and depending upon how full they are, they may readily sell such parts to you if correct for your piano.
I am going to put in a plug for one of my friends: my friend Doug Bullock in Alton IL (Piano World Enterprises) has over a multi decade period collected over 200 not previously restored upright player pianos, to sell to first time rebuilders and/or pull out and restore and sell occasionally in between customer projects. However, due to how busy his shop has been with work, and more and more original coin pianos, reproducing pianos etc coming up needing saving, Doug has not had time to properly photograph or advertise these pianos and has been running out of room to store them, so now has very reluctantly and sadly started junking some of these pianos to make room for some of the rarer ones. He would be thrilled for anyone reading this to come take a piano off his hands or buy for a very modest sum so it can avoid the burn pile. These pianos have been in dry storage on his property for years and I have been there and seen them in person. I hope at least a few more can be saved.
