Alternative to bee wax to hold reeds?

[Ffingers]

I have carried a repair kit and spare parts to all my paid gigs.
Never needed it.

I know that one day I decide too just leave it at home, but I'm sure that will be the day that I need it.

Murphy’s Law.

 

[Alan Sharkis]

I’ve made various repairs on pianos but only rebuilt one player. I have no experience with reproducers, having only seen a few.

The player I rebuilt was the family piano we all played as kids. Our parents required each of us to study piano.

Our piano had a player mechanism but it was in such poor shape due to vacuum leaks the player mechanism was basically non-functional. My brother and I could get it to work somewhat but only with extreme foot pumping. Years later I hauled it from PA to TN in a u-haul trailer and spent a month rebuilding the mechanism, restringing and replacing the hammers too. When I was done I could make it play rolls with the force of just one finger on the foot pedals!

I used it for years (new rolls are available for both new and old songs), then loaned it to several families. It now resides in South Carolina at my oldest son’s home! Still works well.

I know you can now buy kits to turn a piano into a digital reproducer (the first I saw stored the data on a cassette tape) and while rebuilding the player was both fun and extremely educational, the old-fashioned manual piano is all I need. (I bought a 7’ Baldwin in the 80’s and it’s a joy , way more piano than I deserve)

Don’t reproducers play with dynamics as well as the notes and timing? That would add a valuable dimension.

JKJ

Reproducers were anazing instruments. Yes, they could not not only reproduce dynamics, but tempo changes as well. I never experienced a working reproducer, but my curiosity about mechanical music at one time got me reading about the mechanisms of three major brands and how they differed.

At the time, I was teaching high schooll youngsters who, for various reasons couldn’t attend school, so I, and perhaps 400 teachers in the New York City system went to rheir homes to teach them. In one case, there was a beautiful Chickering baby grand in the student’s house. I asked the boy if anyone in his home played it, and he told me that his family played a little, but when they plugged it in, nothing happened. It turned out that they had a piano with an Anpico reproducer mechanism installed. I explained to my student that his family had what was by then a rare instrument and why it was so rare, but I don’t know if they ever got it restored.

 

[Tor]

Well explained on screws, JKJ.  I thought about explaining more, but you did a far better job than I considered.

For anyone doing repairs anywhere, follow that advice.  Finding the old thread is the most critical aspect to not damaging anything.  Metal threads are usually easier to feel and more likely to glide along until the correct point even with bad technique, but all threaded fastenings benefit from proper technique.

 

[Snoopz]

For anyone doing repairs anywhere, follow that advice.

Another bit of advice from my personal experience: Avoid flathead and philips type screws if possible, especially in applications where corrosion is a factor or if you plan to use thread locker. They are terrible for getting loose again years or even decades down the line. The only reason to use these types of screws is if they are visible and need to look good. In that case, consider hex. For everything else, go with torx. Bits for those are easy enough to come by nowadays, at least here in Europe, and they have far better "grip" and far less chance of mangling the head.

 

[Tor]

I'll still say that square (Robertson) is preferable to Torx in general.  One major difference is bit sizes.  Squares come in a very reasonable number of sizes, sufficient to the task, but you can look at a screw head and know which size bit is needed to take it out.  Torx, eventually you may get better at it, but they're still too close together, leading to increased weight and space of drivers, and, if you have a multi-bit set, more switching between them.

Fully agree about flat head and Phillips being visually more appealing than any others for exposed work.

 

[Snoopz]

square (Robertson) is preferable to Torx

Over here in Germany, square does practically not exist, so that’s not really an option. In small scale woodworking I mostly use two sizes of torx, TX20 and TX25, with TX20 being the vast majority with screws from 3 up to 5.5mm diameter, which is the range I commonly use. And you do get better at picking the right size.