Piano World Home Page Forums Other Keyboard Instruments Mechanical Musical Instruments Troubleshooting/fixing an old player piano (Lindeman)

I will soon have a Lindeman player piano. The piano is in very good condition. I'm getting the piano from an excellent piano technician, who approves of it and has fixed what needs fixing for the piano part. It's too expensive to hire a guy to fix the player, though. I was hoping that perhaps I and mechanical minded people could read and figure out how to fix the player. When you pump the foot pedals, the scroll barely moves. I don't know where to look first. Do you have any good links on player pianos and fixing them or something that could help?

Can anyone identify the type of system by the photo? The player has a number engraved in it: 26677



We got the scroll part to move intermittently. We need to get the scroll to see if it plays when the scroll moves....

Usually, these old player pianos leak like crazy...that's prob why the piano roll hardly moves. Without looking at it, it's hard to diagnose properly.

Your best bet would be to hire a player piano restorer. A very good one, but very busy, is Craig Brougher.

http://www.musicrolls.com/cb/index.html

I would love to just pay someone to fix the player, but if I had that kind of money, I would have bought a piano that had a working player, instead of taking a free piano. My guess was also that there was a leak (or several) somewhere. How would I go about finding the leaks?

Re-roll works perfectly! Forward, doesn't really. If I've IDed my player system correctly, it looks like a Double Valve Standard Action.

That is Standard Action. one of the better player actions.

I sold a violin! And so, I paid the player piano fixer man to come out. He got it working, but it doesn't work well. It needs top top bellows (I have no idea what they are called) rebuilt, plus new main pipes. Once I get $400, I'll have it repaired by the expert. In the meantime, we still get to listen to "You're a Dog-Gone Dangerous Girl", played without hands:)

At least it is working some. So you get to enjoy that. Sounds like it needs to be rebuilt to play properly. Maybe your player piano fixer man can get it back in shape for you. They really are a lot of fun.