Julian Dyer mentioned in the 050427 MMD that our roll recuts are not
"perforation accurate."  Well, I think I have to say some words about
that and explain the copying process a bit more.  As a matter of fact,
Wolfgang Haas and I spent more than a year of development in achieving
exactly what Julian wants, a perforation-accurate copy of any existing
roll!

The final result is software and hardware which allows us to copy rolls
which are identical to the original.  Only a mouse-click in the scanner
program is needed to copy each hole of the sample roll into the new
roll.  And we actually use this feature, because it is essential for
several instruments.  For example, a Hupfeld Helios roll needs a 100%
accurate copy of each single hole in track 39, because the critical
spacing in this track triggers the expression units of any big Helios
orchestrion.

But reproducing a roll hole for hole does not always make sense. There
is a huge number of old rolls which originally were badly cut, but still
sold by the companies about a decade ago.  We found many old rolls with
extremely uneven spacing.  So we decided to add the optional feature in
our scanner software of hole-for-hole copying for any track, whenever it
was necessary.

Again, these rolls are still absolutely true to the original, even if
the chaining of notes was improved.  The important fact is that the
beginning and end of any single note is accurate to the original.

By the way, at the end of 2004 we passed the 10,000 milestone -- yes,
ten thousand rolls sold to satisfied customers around the world since
1994!

Best regards,
Tom Jansen
http://www.maesto.com