Developed by the brilliant Engineering Old Timers at the East Rochester NY and Pratt-Reed Connecticut factories post-war during 1947 thru '49, this pneumatically operated all metal, wood & rubber - ie: no plastics - portable paper roll player device debuted in 1950 to catch the wave of folks building new homes who had the new style lowboy spinet pianos for their living or basement rec rooms. However, due to unforeseen internal Company circumstances less than 50 of these marvelous machines were ever produced for sale. Originally conceived to employ a modified Ampico B reproducing system under the left cover (I have the original testbed prototype) the 50 were quickly assembled with an 88 note trackerbar (no sustain pedal control provided) and sent out the door to be forgotten in the fog of Days Gone By. I have tubed up the sustain nipple to a microswitch to trigger the digital piano's sustain. The surprisingly quiet highspeed agricultural vacuum pump is housed in it's own separate 65 lb 'sewing machine' sized cabinet seen below the piano. The next appearance of a key top piano player was the Dynavoice Jet Age plastic machines 10 years later in 1960.
Keywords: playerpiano, Aeolian
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