At a meeting today of the (London) Player Piano Group I met a piano which
has interest in three recent topics: Solodant, theme-equipped transposing
trackerbar and Otto Higel.

This was an upright Wiston & Wiston of 1930.  In the spoolbox it has
switches for Solodant, +/- 4 notes transposing and play/reroll.  The
player action is a Higel and close in appearance to the Standard action
with a 5-unit motor.  The trackerbar face is wholly missing over notes
1-4 and 85-88, since it needs to slide into those spaces when being used
to transpose.  There are no pneumatics for these eight notes, as was
common anyway by then.

The keyboard lip has a sustain-pedal level operating rightwards, two
subduing buttons, a soft-pedal lever operating leftwards, the tempo lever
and a "fast-forward silent" button.  The Solodant lever when ON has no
effect until you depress either or both of the two subduing buttons,
whereupon the piano stops playing in treble, bass or altogether.

Experimentation shows that this is a necessary preliminary to getting
you to pump hard enough to make the Solodant work properly.  Once you
get up a good vacuum, then "theme" rolls play as they should, but there
is no graduation as you get with most Aeolian and Hupfeld instruments --
you have to add subsidiary accents by releasing buttons.  The tone is
generally strident and suitable for playing jazz in a pub, but by using
the soft-pedal (hammerlift rail) lever, I was able to make sense of a
Noel Coward ballad medley.

The rolls track using four-hole tracking as described recently.  Robbie
indicates this system is rare, but after about 1926 the Aeolian sub-
sidiaries in the UK abandoned the old "finger" systems and used it
exclusively, as Standard actions always seemed to have done.

I would describe the Wiston as a remarkably good example of a usually
disappointing type.  (Yes, OK, I'm biased.)

Dan Wilson

 [ Editors comment:
 [
 [ I wasn't aware that the nice 4-hole Standard tracking mechanism was
 [ fitted on players other than built by Standard.  I recall that Dr.
 [ Hickman hoped to use the design for the Ampico B roll tracker, but
 [ evidently Standard refused to grant license for production.  Thus
 [ was born Hickman's innovative "chopper stabilized" proportional
 [ tracking mechanism.
 [
 [ I wish that the bass and treble softening levers on my Themodist
 [ would subdue the accompaniment level a constant amount (in decibels)
 [ below the theme level.  Then the accents would remain nicely apparent
 [ over the full span of my foot-pumping.  I imagine a mechanism which
 [ would regulate the accomp level at a constant percentage of the
 [ theme/resevoir level (less the static zero-level of 4-inches or so).
 [ Was there ever anything like this: a "proportional Solodant?"
 [
 [ Robbie Rhodes