As Les Smith's first reply suggested, your problem is probably in
the upper or lower brake pressure. The slippage problem does
easily occur toward the end of band organ rolls, unless the
tensions of the two brakes are adjusted just right--and this
takes some fine tuning to accomplish. The difference in
circumference between that of the take-up spool and that of the
roll on the top spool is not large at the beginning of play,
because the bare take-up spool is large and the band organ roll
itself is equally large--much larger than any piano roll. But
the difference gets very great toward the end of the roll, so
that you have a very large take-up spool trying to pull paper off
a small-circumference top spool by causing it to turn, the force
required for which is much greater than it was when the top roll
was large. The result is that the drive train, which keeps the
bottom spool turning no matter what, causes the paper on the
bottom spool to tighten up on itself, if there is any room for it
to tighten, as soon as the force required to cause the
self-tightening is less than the force required to pull the paper
off the small-diameter top spool, which, remember, is restrained
to some degree by its brake.
On a band organ, the other factors such as paper surface texture
and degree of drag on the paper caused by tracker bar suction are
(from my observation) minimal factors in the equation, although
they may be significant factors in a piano roll situation.
Keep adjusting and you should lick the problem on all or many of
your large rolls.
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