Bob Lloyd wrote [000321 MMDigest], "What were they designed to play on?"

An Aeolian Themodist-Metrostyle piano, of course!  These pianos had
a greatly simplified version of the Duo-Art mechanism.  It has the
"snake-bite" holes in the tracker bar and the split stack, the same as
a Duo-Art, but does not have the 16 level governors.  Properly
regulated, the note accenting is quite an improvement over a straight
88-note.  That is the Themodist part.

The Metrostyle part is a pointer attached to the tempo indicator, and
the piano operator is supposed to follow the (usually green) line which
wanders along the roll, thus imparting "realistic" tempo variation to
the roll.  This always seemed to me to be a bit of a joke, as they
could have just put the tempo changes into the roll, but I guess this
let the operator feel more involved.  Unfortunately, I have seen
several rolls where the pointer snagged the roll and ripped a nice long
slot in it before the operator could react.  :-(

I rebuilt a Themodist-Metrostyle last year, and it is a really fine
sounding piano.  It was probably the second best non-reproducer I have
ever restored, the best being a Schulz, with the little tiny bellows
operated valves.  A pain to rebuild, but unbelievably responsive.

Tom Dimock
Cornell University