Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE
FEBRUARY 22, 1919
REVIEW
WSST^W^^^W
In the Manufacture of Player-Pianos of Comparatively Small Size There Will
Be Found Problems of Installation, Some of Which Are Discussed Herewith,
Together With Some Suggestions as to How These Problems May Be Solved
Some attention has been directed recently to
the trend, at the moment recognizable, towards
a smaller size of upright piano, meaning by this
a piano of about fifty-two inches height. The
question has been asked whether the pneumatic
action can rightly be accommodated to an in-
strument of that height, and what might be the
general technical limits of its application. A
brief survey of the facts may be useful for the
benefit of superintendents and installers.
The pneumatic action, for the purposes of
these remarks, is divisible into top action, bot-
tom and superstructure.
The bottom action
contains the bellows, expression pneumatic and
accessories of the sort. The top action includes
the pneumatic stack, and in the superstructure
we have the spool box, hammer-rail lifters, etc.
Bellows
Considering the bottom action first of all we
are faced with the fact that in a piano of fifty-
two inches the depth of the case from front to
back will not be as great as for a fifty-six-inch
instrument, for if it is the effect will be clumsy.
But the bellows system in an ordinary player
action demands a slight deepening of the nor-
mal upright case, and so, unless great care is
exercised, the fifty-two-inch player-piano may be
clumsy-looking down below the keybed. This
obviously must be cared for and the bellows
system must be made to work in as shallow a
space as possible. Special care should be given,
therefore, in designing a scale for such a piano,
to see that the plate is built so that its bars
do not project too far outward. When they
are so built it becomes necessary either to file
them down, which is a dangerous as well as a
tedious proceeding, or else to deepen the case,
which is what we wish to avoid. If due care
is given on this point much later trouble may be
avoided permanently.
Of course, where the stroke of a bellows is
made somewhat shallower, in order to prevent
the undue deepening of the case, the loss of ex-
haust capacity may be made up by building the
exhaust units somewhat wider transversely. If
the small instrument we are thinking of is
loaded up with a large damper-lifting pneumatic
in the keybed, and especially if, in addition, any
oi the expression boxes, etc., are placed on the
inside of the sides of the case, there will be
much crowding.
Those who are building a
fifty-two-inch player-piano will do well to
choose a bellows system which is as far as pos-
sible self-contained, and at the same time use a
hand-lever or finger-lever for the damper-lift.
This last point deserves a moment's digres-
sion. The arguments usually urged in support
of the pneumatic damper-lift come down, when
analyzed, to these two, namely, that the public
want "buttons" instead of levers and that the
automatic damper-pedal slots in the music rolls
really do give good pedal effects which should
be utilized.
That the public care even a button about but-
tons the present writer by no means believes, but
that some dealers seem to think so cannot be
denied. Yet the Standard actions go into many
makes of piano with lever instead of button
equipment, and some well-known makes of
players, such as the M. Schulz Co. and some
ot the Aeolian line, etc., which have exclusive
actions, are also made this way in some of theii
popular styles. There is no reason why the
slow, clumsy, power-consuming pedal pneumatic
should be used, and in the small player-piano it
would be better not to use it at all.
The Top Action
The pneumatic stacks in most of the popular
player actions of the day are built very com-
pactly and do not occupy in width more space
than the piano action itself. That is to say,
they can be set up in front of the piano action
so that their ends carrying the big exhaust
tubes fit nicely over the keyblocks and slightly
The highest class player
actions in the world
urn iiifiiiiiiiiiiiniTitifiiiiLiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiTtTiMiiiiiiiiiiiriiiiiitttitmniiiiiiTiitihiiiiiiiiiiiMM] iiiiiiiTiirrn 11 1 iiiiiii JM^MEII]II:I[UM i M 111 inmmitinitti n m ITI i [liTiinitiiTiuiiTiiiiiriMiiiiiiititiiiiuiu u ILII n LI
"The valve unit that made the player famous"
The new "Amphion Accessible Action" is the last word in scientific player
achievement. It has the complete valve action assembled in a "Demountable
Unit'' giving instant accessibility.
AMPHIONWCTIONS
SYRACUSE
Your Guarantee
NEW YORK
behind them, with ample room for the fallboard.
Where a player-piano is very short, however, it
may sometimes be necessary to use a single fall-
board instead of the Boston fall, on account of
the slightly shallow case which good looks de-
mand. But otherwise there cannot be any rea-
son for altering or modifying the ordinary pneu-
matic stack.
There are several ways of attacking the piano
action from the pneumatic stack and some of
these are in course of dispute, owing to clashing
of "rights under patents. It may therefore be
noted, in passing, that, all things considered, it
is better, from the space standpoint, to attack
on the abstract, owing to the consequent elim-
ination of rods or plungers.from the pneumatics.
This point may be valuable when the case of a
small player-piano is shallow.
The Superstructure
. If a case is short there will probably not be
roonl enough to put the spoolbox over the ham-
mers, and yet the decrease in depth so much
needed in order to permit the designing of a
really pleasing case cannot be had in any other
way. It is necessary to make the spoolbox as
narrow and a little lower, although usually very
little change can be made. One thing, how-
ever, can be done. The hammer-lifting pneu-
matics at the sides can be omitted, and levers
put in their place which take up less room and
waste no air-power. That will help cut down
the amount of machinery crowded in.
The manner of setting in the top frame of
the piano is, of course, decidedly to be consid-
ered when a short player is being designed. The
frame will be somewhat low for its width, of
course, and this means that the sliding doors,
if they are to look nice, must be quite wide for
their height.
It is necessary to make the
frame with a double sliding panel, of course,
and the same is true of the bottom frame, al-
though the latter is not hampered by space
consideration to the same degree.
The other details of case construction require
no special attention.
A Summary of the Problem
These brief considerations are adduced for
the purpose of showing that the small player-
piano has installation problems of its own.
There is undoubtedly a trend towards small-
sized instruments and these will have to be
made. The limits of space requirements can be
fairly definitely laid down, and it is quite cer-
tain that a piano less than fifty inches high, even
if it were otherwise in demand, would present
problems of great complexity to the installer
ot player actions. Still, the designers should
recognize the fact that the day of the very
large player-piano is almost over, and should
make up their minds to develop a player action
even more compact than the regular sizes of
to-day. One point to be kept iivmind is that
the player action of to-day is steadily tending
towards a system of single-valve control which
means a small stack and smaller pneumatics.
It means smaller pneumatics because the action
of to-day is tighter and leaks less than the ac-
tion of a few years ago. Tightness means higher
tension, greater available pressure per square
inch and consequently smaller parts. There the
tiend towards smaller sizes in pianos comes at
the right time.
The von Fossen Music Co., Virginia, 111., have
formed a partnership with C. F. Noeker, and
will open a branch store in the Bishop Building,
the firm name being the von Fossen Noeker Co.