I don’t have photos of it yet, but I’ve inherited a Wurlizter player piano from the 1960’s from my grandmother. It won’t be in my possession until October, but when I get it, I will begin the process of restoring it, as it hasn’t been cared for in well over 15 years.

I think it’ll be an interesting learning experience, I think. I was talking to a friend about my work on it, and she was interested in how things work out for it… then it dawned on me that it might be an interesting thing to chronicle. I figured that since I’ve been doing a lot of my ‘real life’ and ‘gaming’ stuff on here, it’ll probably go here, so people can keep tabs on the state of the piano.

Currently, it’s in my late grandmother’s house in Odessa, Tx. The house is currently on the market, and if it doesn’t sell over the summer, we plan to go there in October and pick up the furnishings that belong to us and have them moved back to our home. It will be returning to Dallas with the rest of the things that are being picked up by my parents… and from there, I will hire piano movers to move it from my parents’ home to my apartment. (Of course, going from a 1st floor home to a 2nd floor apartment will be an adventure in of itself. Oh my.)

I will make posts on the move, of course. I may post a video on youtube of the piano as it is, as I got it to play again back in November when we were at her home last. I’ll let people know if I do.

For the current status- I’m in the process of buying two piano rolls (Star Wars, and Die Walkure Grand Selection), and a tracker bar air pump for cleaning the tracker bar itself. I am terrified of how much dust might be in that. D: As it is also in a dire need of tuning, and I will be having a piano tuner go by my grandmother’s home to examine it and tell me what sort of work needs to be done on it before I move it back to Dallas, so that I know what else I may need for it. I also plan on ordering a book on player piano repair and servicing from Amazon soon.

Another thing I’ve considered on doing is eventually (this is like… 3-4 years in the future. Not /now/…) having PianoDisc installed to the piano. I don’t know if it’ll be possible to do so and preserve the already installed pneumatic system, but I saw someone who has had that done, according to his youtube videos. I’ll just have to talk to a retailer that sells/installs PianoDisc systems, I guess… but I like the idea of it being able to play based on midi *and* piano rolls… It’ll just be an awfully pricey endeavor.