Dear Jody Kravitz and mail list subscribers:

In the way of a formal-informal introduction the best way to start is
to tell you all who I am and what I am interested in.

My name is William Wolverton (Bill).  I live in a small town adjacent
to Flint, Michigan in a Metro area with a population of 360k.  I am 48
years old, married with three children ages 2-14.

I am an educator and business consultant in the applications of
computers in education.  I additionally recycle used computers and
computer parts and support equipment.  So if any of the subscribers
needs some special computers parts, etc. please feel free to contact
me.

Educational background.

I have two under graduate degrees, and two masters degrees.  My under
graduate degrees are in business administration, and psychology (and
teaching),  my masters degrees are in Education Administration of
Community Education programs and Administration of Athletic programs.
I have been working on a post masters program in the field of
educational systems development, with in the speciality area of
applications of computers in education.

My interest in player pianos dates back to my first introduction with
one as a young child.  The unit belonged to my mother's cousin.  I used
to watch the adults play the instrument with great enjoyment.

As time passed I have always wanted to have a player of my own.  I
began collecting them about 7 years ago.  I have owned a woodward,
Cable, a Kimbal, a Steck, and a Farrand.

The Steck and the Farrand I still have.  By the way, the Farrand is the
instrument that was owned by mother's cousin who got it as a child in
1928 and I acquired it only last year.

I have a collection of 1000-1200 rolls.  The exact number I have not
got yet.  I try to grade each one by a set of evaluation items
(condition and my personal enjoyment of the roll).  Half of my
collection are before 1930 and the majority of the rest are after 1960
to the early 1980's.  I believe that 86% are playable.  Most are stock
rolls and a dozen are auto-reproducing rolls.  The majority of the
rolls are made by QRS.

I am not much of a wood worker as repairs goes on the piano or player
mechanism goes.  But in the area of electronics I feel at home.

Over the last seven years my hobby has been to seek out a method to
convert a roll into a MIDI computer file.  I have been watching over
the years the development of variety of MIDI keyboard sensors and new
era computer based servo controlled player pianos.  Each year I try to
get a little closer to my goal of retrofitting one of my pianos.  I want
to develop a dual function electronic & classic instrument capable of
playing both rolls and computer disks from an on board PC device or
from an external PC system.

Another pet project is the development of a black box type of roll
reader.  This reader will be able to read rolls and output a MIDI
signal to a PC for use with such software as cakewalk and encore.  My
goal is to make the device completely independent of any piano player
mechanism.

I do not want to reinvent the wheel, so I am looking for inputs from
subscribers who may have a similar projects to the ones listed above.
I welcome all subscriber inputs on this matter.

Additionally, I am looking for any subscribers that my have technical
information about the design-drawings and maintenance info on my
Farrand and my Steck pianos.  I also would like to get more historical
information about the instruments.  Additionally I would like to gather
information on what rolls are the most collectible classics and any
collector ranking-catalog system for rolls that may exist.

I look forward to any and all inputs from you all.  Thank you.

Sincerely,

Bill Wolverton

 [ Editor's Note:  There are several readers here who have
 [ built roll readers which deposit their data directly
 [ into a PC (without a piano player mechanism involved).
 [ Several of these systems record the data in a proprietary
 [ "raster scan" form (to facilitate specialized post-processing
 [ but MIDI files can be  derived from these systems in all cases.
 [ I invite readers who have built readers or are contemplating
 [ building one to to remind me in which digests they have talked
 [ about their systems.  Or... write about them again.  This is always
 [ an interesting topic.  Those wishing to write to Bill directly
 [ should try this address:
 [
 [           test19@ally.ios.com  (Bill Wolverton)
 [
 [ Jody