Introduction and Pianocorder Question
By Mike Jardin
Hello All,
I'm Mike Jardin from San Jose, Ca. Like many of you, my interest in automatic music began many years ago with the purchase of an old player piano. It was amazingly well preserved for its age, and to this day continues to play well with only occasional repair. My piano has the Simplex player mechanism which cannot reproduce the expression of the artist. However, I have noticed that many of the rolls in my collection have the extra "tracks" cut into the edges of the paper to control expression pneumatics.
I'm familiar with the Ampico, Welte and Duo-Art type of rolls, but I've never heard of some of the other formats. I have several Themo- dist, and a couple Angelus, Accentuated and Pianostyle rolls. Does anyone know if these formats are proprietary to one particular piano maker? They sound ok on my player, but the music is obviously not being reproduced as the artist intended it to be.
A few months ago I picked up a 1906 Lyon & Healy non-player vertical piano. It was in very bad condition and the owner was planning to trash it if someone didn't buy it. It's really come back to life over the past few weeks. I haven't had the time to totally rebuild it, but after many hours of repairs and regulation it sounds pretty good. I plan to install a Pianocorder and MIDI upgrade kit into it during the Summer. Why not PianoDisc or Pianomation? Too expensive and too hard for the hobbyist to tinker with.
Anybody have any praises/warnings on their past experience with Pianocorder?
My thanks to Jody and all of you nice people.
Best regards,
Mike
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(Message sent Tue 16 May 1995, 22:12:11 GMT, from time zone GMT-0800.) |
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