Perforating music rolls is one of those endeavors that cannot be
appreciated until you have done the task yourself.  I won't bore
you with a lot of non-essential details but will say that the size
of hole punched in the paper DOES make a difference to the end user
of the roll.

Back in the mid 1960's, rolls purchased from Ed Freyer often did not
work on coin operated pianos with large bleeds.  The notes simply did
not play or did not repeat.  Changing the bleed size -- often done with
a round head screw for each note -- did the trick.

When I started punching 58-note Orchestrelle rolls the holes in the
paper were smaller than those originally used by Aeolian.  Notes that
were supposed to repeat did not and the rolls played marginally on
single valve instruments.  Double valve instruments had no problem.

When I rebuilt the perforator dies in March of this year I replaced
the punches with a larger size -- the same size as used by Aeolian.
It just so happens that was the same size as in rolls made by the
Clark Orchestra Roll Company of DeKalb, Illinois.  The new and improved
Orchestrelle rolls performed flawlessly, or so say my customers.
I must confess I have never seen an Orchestrelle in person and until
YouTube I had never heard one except over the telephone.

If you have an Orchestrelle then you might be interested in the rather
large number of re-cut rolls that I now have in stock.  You can reach
the catalog from my home page.  I had to change my URL as someone in
China hijacked my site and did all sorts of horrible things to it.  The
web address is

  http://www.egaida.com/ 

You can check out the new lineup of A, G and 4X rolls that I have just
posted to the site.

Ed Gaida
San Antonio, Texas - where we endured over 55 straight days of
temperatures over 100 degrees -- 37.778 Celsius if you speak metric!