Universal Players

[dempsey@MARSHALL.EDU]

Just so happens I've recently run across one of these and the owner is
looking to part with it. I agree completely with your assessment. However,
this one is in "like new" condition. It probably has less than an HOUR of
playing time on it. 

It was purchased new about 15 years ago, has never been tuned and
regulation is non-existant.But, there it is in all its stained glass front
glory complete with gargoyels, lions heads,grapes and leaves "carvings" 
In Oak.

Owner says they paid about $4K for it. Care to venture a guess as to what
it  should sell for today? (regulated and tuned, of course)

Paul E. Dempsey, RPT
Marshall University 
Huntington, WV

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Ron Nossaman wrote:

> I remember a few things about these player shaped objects too. The pianos
> were pretty awful, and about 6" ("universally") shorter than the case
> dimensions would seem to indicate. It was pretty tough to get a tuning
> hammer past the spool box to tune them, as I recall, and it was often hard
> to tell that you HAD tuned them when you were done except for the blood on
> your elbow and forearm from the sharp corners of the aluminum spool box. The
> player mechanism was super tight, and that was the selling point. The
> trade-offs in design features that made these systems so tight didn't strike
> me as that good a deal. The aluminum stack used polyurathane pouches, which
> are wonderfully air tight, and offer very close bleed and valve repetition
> rate control at very light vacuum levels, but tended to rot and leak
> quickly. The valves were neoprene, which hardens and warps with age, making
> them considerably shorter lived than a good leather faced valve. The roll
> drive motor was electric, which accounted for quite a bit of the apparent
> vacuum efficiency of the system, and also meant that you still couldn't play
> the player without power. It wasn't an entirely pneumatic system. The drive
> motors also seemed to require occasional visits from a tech to tighten set
> screws, make adjustments, and generally coax them back to function. The
> automatic tracker valve system consisted of a couple of sequential cutout
> pouches controlling a constant leakage bleed override system to work the
> tracker pneumatic(s?). Not too efficient or dependable, but extremely cheap
> and easy to manufacture, and actually, kind of clever. It also seems to me
> that there was a problem with the sustain pneumatic design, but it seems to
> have evaporated from memory. 
> 
> Bottom line is that they were players, about like the Kimballs and
> Wurlitzers with the slug and leaf switch tracker bar and solenoid action
> were players. I don't miss them a bit.
> 
>  Ron 
> 
>