Almost all of the rolls you find that play the top- and bottom-most notes
will be arranged rolls, and of those mostly heavily-arranged rolls (i.e.,
lots of octave doubling).  Notice that very few people play those notes,
either.

I had an amusing problem as the result of this issue.  Scott Kirby plays
the top note on the piano in several of his piano solo arrangements, and
I made an 88-note roll of one of them a few years ago: Frankie & Johnny
Boogie.  I played it in the footpumper contest at the Chicago AMICA
convention (1993?) and had to hit that top note by hand since the player
we used didn't have a pneumatic for that note!  A pianolist's work is
never done.

I've always heard (is it in Reblitz' player restoration book?) that the
piano key disable lever was intended for early players to improve the
repetition rate on fast tremolo stuff in player rolls.  It's usually not
a concern to me because I usually don't like rolls with lots of fast
tremolos in them!

How may of us avoid buying old rolls that say "Marimba Waltz" on them?
I avoid those rolls like the plague, and always get a laugh when I find
only 1 or 2 old rolls in an antique shop: they always seem to be marimba
waltzes and are over-priced at 7 to 10 dollars!  Yuck!

Cheers, Rob DeLand¶
(deland_robert@macmail1.csg.mot.com)

 [ Heck, I _like_ the "Marimba Effects,"  especially when played with
 [ the "marimba" attachment on the ol' pumper!  It's kind of like an
 [ organ playing.  (Kinda... ;-)   -- Robbie