My player piano is a French Klein, serial number 33918 (before 1920), with a "no-name" pneumatic action which looks like Odeola: the four-chamber air-motor and the tracking system look like Odeola ones, but obviously much cheaper, and it uses two tiers of pneumatics instead of three.  It works, but the piano is not in good condition.  It has worked hard for me and I've delayed maintenance -- very expensive.

I've "MIDI-fied" the piano with a system made of surplus relays, some electronics and a microcontroller Atmel AVR (a small board is visible at the right of photographs).  This system works with a few problems; one or two of my relay-made electro-valves remain stuck after a few months of disuse.

I attach three photographs of my piano and a schema drawing.  The schema is approximately to scale when printed on a size A4 sheet.  (I used Turbocad 3.01 to draw it and I pasted it into Word 97).  The length of the pneumatics in my schema is probably exaggerated, and there are probably leather joints between the vertical plank and inputs of pouches to ensure airtightness (in addition to the beautiful red paper joint). but I don't wish to dismantle the action to verify this !  On the lid of the piano, there are a computer (with Cakewalk), its charger and a pink box temporarily used to connect together two male MIDI plugs.

Best regards from Bordeaux, France

Jean-Pierre Jouandet
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 20:52:09 +0100

piano1.jpg (121 kb)
piano2.jpg (93kb)
piano3.jpg (122kb)