Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
11
The Unit-Valve System for Players Is Gradually Being Adopted by Manu-
facturers, and Possesses Vast Potentialities for Providing a Foundation for
the Final Standardization of the Player-piano — Some of Its Chief Points
Simplification is, of course, a condition of
progress in any art. The earlier productions in
any type of invention are of necessity relatively
crude and positively complex. For no matter
how carefully the inventor has attempted to
calculate in advance all possible conditions, it
is beyond the capacity of any human being to
predicate the future with complete correctness.
The conditions in which the machine will be
obliged to perform its function can be foreseen
more or less, but never quite completely; and
MI it invariably follows that the standardized
type is preceded by a series of others leading
up tn it and representing in the aggregate all
the variations from the original, which experi-
ence has dictated.
hi the case presented by our own industry,
we have a striking range of examples in sup-
port of this assertion. The conditions in which
the player mechanism performs its functions
and even the real requirements of the mechan-
ism from the playing point of view, were most
imperfectly foreseen by the pioneers, with the
result that, although there has been much con-
servatism and scarcely enough progressiveness
among designers, certain supposedly sacred
ideas have been weeded out, others are in
process of elimination and others again, which
were for long scoffed at, are imposing them-
selves of sheer necessity upon the industry.
Growth of the Unit-Valve Idea
A specially interesting case is presented in
the unit-valve idea which seems to be pressing
its claims ever more strongly upon designers.
Briefly stated, the unit-valve is to be described
as some form of construction in which each
pneumatic is built as a separable unit with its
controlling valve or valves. It is directly op-
posed to the system of construction in which
the controlling valves are massed within one or
two chests, with the pneumatics outside.
Tt is not intended here to enter into the rela-
tive merits of the two systems, for there is
much to be said on both sides and the discus-
sion would be fruitless in any case. It is rather
proposed to examine the unit idea with a view to
seeing what advantages its adoption might be
expected to bring and what its future is likely
to be.
Let it be said at once that any popularity the
unit system may be expected to achieve, or has
as yet achieved, is to be based upon other qual-
ities than that of saving air space. At the super-
ficial glance it might seem that the massing of
valves in one or two large trunk vacuum chests
could not fail to involve the use of larger vol-
umes of air to be exhausted. But the difficulty
is more apparent than real. In fact,' if it be
remembered that in the unit system, not count-
ing the passage from valve system to pneu-
matic, there must be the pressure reduction
chamber for each valve, the connection from
one valve to another, if two be used, the cham-
ber under each pouch and the channel from
tracker bar to pouch, it will be seen that the
total number of cubic inches per set of eighty-
eight pneumatics, built on the unit-valve plan,
may easily be more, instead of less, than found
by a measurement of similar vacuum chest sys-
tems.
Advantages of Unit-Valve System
We have, in fact, to leave this idea altogether
out of our calculations, and the only immediate
and obvious superiority that the unit system
can claim is found to be one of less importance.
The unit system can claim the avoidance of
long packed joints. It can claim, in certain
conditions also, the elimination of the tendency
to a general lowering of power through the
entire pneumatic stack whenever a leak occurs
around one valve. It can point out that in the
case of one special form of construction, a leak
around one valve operates on that one only
and cannot damage the workings of more than
the one pneumatic. Now in the case of a second-
ary chest, to take a convenient example, failure
THE SALTER LINE
and
c>
Have stood
the test
Salter
Mfg. Co.
We have made
cabinets for over
40 years.
AH our goods are
guaranteed.
You t a k e no
chances when
you have the old
reliable line in
your show rooms.
S e n d for our
latest catalog to-
day, showing our
complete line.
339 N. Oakley Blvd., Chicago
on the part of one valve to seat means the con-
stant leakage of air into the chest, with conse-
quent general reduction of power level. This
the unit system avoids; provided that it alto-
gether avoids at the same time the vacuum
chest and carries its passages from the reduction
chamber through separated metal tubes to the
action cut-off or expression boxes. Tf, however,
the unit valve system leads into a chest which
thus merely has the valves outside of its in-
terior instead of within it, the advantage spoken
of is, of course, non-existent.
On the whole it is probably true 1<> say that
accessibility and ease of repair form the prin-
cipal advantages of the unit, system. But there
is another point, aside from all this, which
requires some serious attention.
Standardization of the Action
The upright piano action has developed in
the course of a hundred years from a crude
make-shift separately got up by each manufac-
turer to a completely standardized machine
made almost exactly uniform throughout the
world, except in the case of the very cheapest
European pianos, and nowhere differing save
in unimportant details. The same is largely
true of the grand action, but the well-known ex-
ception of Erard and the differences that dis-
tinguish the practice of such action makers as
Steinway, Broadwood, Bechstein, Flemming,
Langer, Schwander, Wessell, Nickel & Gross,
Strauch Bros, and others make it impossible to
use this high type of action as an example with-
out undue liberality of construction. The im-
portance, however, is that the upright action
has become a virtually standardized machine
and that we may regard the present type as
not only the best now, but probably the best for
all the future.
Now the gradual adoption of a unit valve
system, we believe, is virtually assured by the
logic of events. All signs point in that direc-
tion. It seems to us that the principal import-
ance of this system will lie in the potentiality it
will possess of providing foundations for the
final standardization of the player action. This
standardization would be quite as desirable to-
day as ten years from now and that means as
desirable as anything can well be. Nothing will
be lost that is worth keeping and much will be
gained that cannot otherwise be had by the
gradual working out of a standard form of
pneumatic and valve. The technical, mechanical
and musical advantages of such an achievement
are so enormous that one hesitates to attempt
description of them in detail. It is safe to say
that absolutely nothing is gained at the present
moment by the multiplication of systems; but
it must be recognized that the art is now in a
condition which makes such differentiation
quite inevitable. In short, the art of player de-
sign is as yet imperfectly understood. So long
as this is the case, differentiation is inevitable.
But when the basic facts are known to
all. then standardization will begin to arrive
automatically, from the mere approach of de-
sign to the central perfection, which would be
the result of perfect knowledge. From the be-
ginning of this process to its consummation,
the unit system will occupy an essential posi-
tion in the development.
The reason for this is simple; it rests on the
fact that a set of eighty-eight action sections
naturally implies a parallel set of eighty-eight
player sections, each self-contained, each inter-
changeable, in all parts. And only the unit sys-
tem can furnish the basis for this development.