I have been helping a friend sell his piano, and looked at it a little closer today. It is a German-made Steck Pianola grand. It took a bit of research to find that indeed, Aeolian had a Steck factory in Gotha, despite what Pierce says, so I could date it to approximately 1911. That makes it too early to be a Duo-Art, and in fact, it is another rarity. It is a dual 65-88 note player. There are two rows of holes in the tracker bar, and a switch to chose between them.

I will put up some pictures soon.

Steck Gotha had a reputation for building very decent instruments. 65/88 note players were mostly built in the years following the format switch from 65 to 88 notes being playable, mainly before the first world war.

Sounds like an interesting piano, alright.

BDB, great shots. I would own that piano any day, despite the fact that these player grands have bulky (deep) rims and such.

How do you set up the photos and the link in your posting like that?

Click the "Full Reply Form" and use the URL button.

Or just use the same syntax as your website in your signature:

(URL=http://yourlink.com)Link text here(/URL)

(Replace parentheses with brackets)

--Cy--

Well, if you want to buy it, my friend is selling. It is actually not a bad looking instrument. I bet it would be a lot more fun and better exercise than going down to the gym and using a treadmill or stationary bicycle.

I imported the photos into iPhoto on my Mac, and had it make a webpage. I then copied the HTML files, folders and photos to the webspace that comes with our account with an FTP tool, Cyberduck in this case. There is no actual website there, just files that I placed there.