Cleaning primary valves

[Ron Nossaman]

>    Unless you know already, I will really be surprised if you can tell me
>what is going on.   It is an unfair question.   It would help to have the
>valve board on the bench to figure it out.  Now it seems like these
>primaries shouldn't work at all.  Of course look at all the players
>including Standard that did away with them.  Hold over from 64 note players
>is my guess.    ---ric


It about has to be the pouches holding them up. The pouch leather shrinks
and stiffens with time, and if this is an original installation, it's time
came and went forty years ago. Another possibility is gasket leaks, but
it's almost certainly the pouches. These pouches were dished too deeply in
the first place, and the inner valve bottom was positioned too far into the
dish, by my criteria. This is a common problem, and requires pouch
replacement to dependably fix. Sorry, I assumed you had already checked that.

There is very little in the way of patch-up maintenance possible with the
old players. They're all over 70 years old and all the perishable parts
have long since perished, including the piano. "Just getting it working"
isn't really worth the time and effort any more unless the customer is
willing to spring for rebuilding the piano and the player. It's a deep
black hole you're looking into.

Ron N