The reproducer does not have the pedal‐and‐pump mechanism that activates the player-it operates electrically, moving a complex series of special bellows that reproduce the phrasing and modulation of whoever created the piano roll. Stocked with as little as $75 worth of service manuals (usually reprinted from the original), instruction books and a few basic tools and materials, enthusiasts can transform what they call the “player action” (as opposed to simple piano innards) from a weather‐weary, mouse‐molested reject to an orchestration of expanding and collapsing bellows-the pumps that breathe life into these vacuum‐operated machines.Įnthusiasts collect all manner of roll‐actuated instruments, but the player piano and its more elaborate relative, the reproducing piano, are the most popular. Approximately 2,500,000 player pianos were built between 1900 and the Depression years, and mostof these, like the black‐iron wood stoves of the period, were never expected to be seen again.īut just as necessity has rekindled flames in the oncebanished wood stove, so nostalgia has served to pump air into those big wooden music boxes of yesteryear. Banished into barns, basements and tinderboxes, it was largely displaced by its lower cost, more versatile modern counterparts-the radio and the record player.
Thousands of tunes ago the old time player piano practically disappeared.
