Plastic Classic Forum

A 1919 Knabe 6'-4" grand with an original Ampico player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvB-UeKkqDU

I've wanted one of these since I was about 14.

Quetzalsailor wrote:A 1919 Knabe 6'-4" grand with an original Ampico player: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvB-UeKkqDU

I've wanted one of these since I was about 14.

Knabe's are very nice, my sister has an upright that sounds amazing, was my grandmothers.... They don't make them like that anymore...

Sweet! I half expected the dog to be up cutting a rug the second time you panned over that direction :D

I got to "play" a player piano for the first time a couple of summers ago - it was the type where you pump it and move levers and such (but similar cut paper rolls actually control the keys). Pretty magical!

Very nice! I've only played with upright players with human pedal power, never a grand with a remote air pump - very slick.

What are the five red dancing cards doing? It looks like they'd be letting off a little steam, but I don't understand the purpose. Very fun to watch, that's for sure!

The Ampico (AMerican PIano COmpany) player action is one of several makes which reproduce the playing of the original pianist. The American Piano Company was formed by the merger in about 1912, of Knabe, Chickering, and Mason & Hamlin; they built those three top of the line brands and a whole coterie of lesser, cheaper brands. But you could get an Ampico action in any of them. The rolls are encoded along the edges, those extra holes, which tells the action to raise or lower the amount of vacuum in the Bass and Treble windchests. Thus the key striker pneumatics (bellows) have more or less power to raise the keys harder or softer. Prominent pianists of the day recorded, and approved their recordings(!), for the Ampico, Duo-Art, Welte Mignon, etc.

Here's an idea of the complexity hidden under an otherwise normal grand: The 5 dancing cards are the five slide valve covers controlling air flow through the five pneumatics of the air motor that drives the roll. The crank is a piece of heavy bent wire, formed with 'journals' at 72 degrees. (this one is just beginning to be disassembled; it's not mine)

Interestingly, the WW II era Link Trainer, designed to teach instrument airplane flying, was majorly pneumatic in the operation of the cockpit. A very similar air motor rotated the 'plane and bellows set pitch, and bank. Fun for a Sunday morning; gets your mind out of the bilge for a moment.

A player grand?!! Easier than a full-upright, but still... what does that weigh? 500lb? 600?

I think an old upright would weigh in at 5- 600 lbs. A small, baby, grand about the same. A little 'studio' upright would be much less. I estimate that this 6'-4" grand weighs about 750 lbs plus 250 lbs for the player mechanism. The pump, with an 18" square cast iron face, and the motor, all bolted to a bit of wood base, is about all I can carry. Means I can just barely get the tail off the floor for a few seconds and cannot get either front corner off the ground at all. Sue and I moved the thing from where you see it in the video about 2' closer to the window wall and toward the end wall. We slid it on the carpet by lifting and leaning in the desired direction, two corners at a time, rotating or walking it. Whew!

Still, only 1/16th of what Quetzal weighs! And less than 1/3rd of what the Volvo weighs.