The holiday season is a busy time for ‘Daddy Groman’s Moravian Bake Shop’ and while visiting Bethlehem, PA last week, my services as part-time electrician and cookie cutter were employed. A new ground-fault circuit breaker brought the outdoor Christmas scene to life and many thousands of Moravian Star sugar cookies were baked. Over 200 piano rolls were inspected and repaired in preparation for scanning. Included are some rare and unique unissued Ampico factory trial rolls from the Alan Mueller collection in Rochester, NY. I saw one leader signed in pencil by Charles Stoddard. On this roll can be seen numerous pencil marks instructing the editing staff to lengthen or ‘bleed’ many of the notes. Another setup roll has a curious pencil mark showing how the pumping lines were contrived. It appears this trial roll was played on a piano with a pencil attached to a lever (probably) from the pumping bellows reservoir. A person familiar with how the music should be expressed, plays the roll and expresses using the pumping treadles. From this marked roll, a new stencil master is punched on the stencil machine. As this is being done, the machine operator manipulates a pointer to follow the penciled pumping line. This causes the left edge of the stencil master to be trimmed (or marked for trimming) to a wavy edge, following the pumping line. As proof, we have many stencil masters which have these wavy left edges. The perforators had to be equipped to ‘track’ this left edge and move the pens as the 30 copies of the roll were being punched. We haven’t seen these edge tracking mechanisms since they had long ago been removed from the perforators but the pen tray frames are still attached and serve as guides for the incoming paper.
We set up another computer for editing and correcting the MIDI punch master files and now everyone at Keystone is fully trained to perform this function independently. We ran a few titles on the perforators including one Republic 88 note tune, ‘Spankin’ the Baby’.
All this hard work toward the upcoming catalog left little time for tickling the pianos. This was remedied Saturday evening as Richard and I trekked to a foggy undisclosed location in Pennsylvania coal country to attend a 1920′s themed holiday party named ‘All That Jazz’. Due to the clandestine nature of the other party guest’s occupations, it was necessary to mask their identities in the photos and the invitation had to be redacted. Many thanks to hosts ‘Brian’ and ‘Melissa’ for the wonderful entertainment and buffet.
Earlier in the week, we checked in on John Zeiner & Sons to see what progress had been made on the 1926 Chickering Ampico. We were very pleased to see the cabinet finish nearly done and the plate, pinblock, strings and hammers have been installed. All that remains are the dampers, several tunings and hammer voicing. We’re nearly there!!!
Over the past few weeks, the primary chest has been disassembled, scraped and sanded. The vacuum channels have been reamed and resealed. All valve leather facings have been replaced. While inspecting the vacuum channels, one was found to be partially obstructed by the original sealant which was rather thick and lumpy as if it had some sawdust mixed with it. This obstruction was in the hole at the bottom of one pouch well and blocked more than half its diameter. It’s amazing it was not seen and corrected at the time the pouches were being affixed. I’m glad I decided to replace all the pouches. Quite a few of the sieves were haphazardly installed and would not have protected the bleeds from clogging. Overall, there wasn’t really very much dust or lint found. Maybe this piano wasn’t used all that much. All bleeds were removed and polished inside and out. A gage pin was inserted into each orifice to assure all were identical in size. Two potential ciphers were discovered while sealing the vacuum channels. These could manifest if certain screws were loose or missing. Next, I will make a special vacuum operated pouch setter to properly dish these pouches.
Congratulations to daughters Laura and Katy for their recent music recitals. Laura did her half-hour recital at Crane School of Music, performing several difficult pieces by Donazetti and Debussy in Italian and French. I was privileged to view the performance VIA Skype video connection. Katy represented her school at the NYSSMA All-State Conference in Rochester, NY, performing in the women’s chorus as alto in section 2. I’m very proud of you both!
Advertisement
