1950 Aeolian-American PIANOLA keytop piano player

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.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• playerpiano
• Aeolian

[fairfaxok]

Truly delightful. To answer the question below about the tune names, they are:

Long Ago and Far Away, The Very Thought of You, and I've Heard That Song Before.Thank you for sharing!

[SuperWoodyboy]

this is fantastic!! Never though about putting it on a modern keyboard with all the extra sounds..Violins etc!! BEAUTIFULL!! I want one!

[TheMartinrie1]

It's very beautiful!

What are the names of all these songs?

[HESOYAM442]

Great!!

[anglerfly]

I have a video of something simalaur called " note grind " it took someone else ( who is good at circutry ) 2 weeks to build it!

[Karlfalcon]

Well, that's one way to transcribe rolls to digital files...

[MrKipW]

I always liked player pianos and roll recordings. Today we explored a different street on our way home from getting my car looked at, and I discovered the old chimney from the AMPICO factory that they knocked down just a couple of months after we moved to the area. I never suspected! Thanks for sharing this incredible toy with us.

[boomtickypop]

Thanks for posting, Dave. I've wanted to see one of these in action since I got my first copy of The Player Piano Treasury in the late 1960s. Much nicer than the Dynavoice (I have two Dyno's, one working and the other for parts). Nice demo of the piano's capabilities as well. Don't hesistate to post again. Does anyone else have one of these working?

[detrbear]

Wow, I'd never seen more than advertising for these, it seems to work quite well, a lot better than the later Dynavoice. Thank you very much for sharing!

[ggpr221292]

Beautiful machine! Old meets new. Looks like a great way to encode piano rolls to MIDI. :-)