I have an Ampico roll on eBay that readers of MMD might find
interesting.  It is roll no. 61643-G, Barcarolle in F Sharp Major, by
Chopin, played by Julius Chaloff.  The roll is in mint condition and
plays perfectly, yet someone has added countless hundreds of very tiny
gummed tape lengths to the end of certain notes.  I am not referring to
'Scotch' type tape; this tape is the old-fashioned water soluble kind
that looks like thin waxed paper and became practically obsolete since
the invention of 'Scotch' tape many years ago.

I cannot find a method to this madness; it obviously took someone many,
many hours to slightly shorten some notes.  These notes appear to be the
ones that were artificially lengthened by Ampico editors, but not all
lengthened perforations got taped, and even ones that did get taped had
only perhaps the last quarter inch or so taped over, leaving long
lengths of artificially long notes.

At first, I thought that perhaps this person would allow a lengthened
perforation as long as the damper pedal was up, but any lengthening
after that would be taped over.  While this is true in many cases,
it is not always the case.

I believe that pianos use up over 90% of their sound energy in the
first fraction of a second, and the beginnings of the notes are never
altered, fortunately.  Personally, I would defy a listener to be able
to hear the difference between the original roll and the modified one,
but I will be the first to admit my hearing is not as good as
professional musicians.  I have some photos of these tape segments as
they are glued on the roll and anyone who has any ideas of why someone
would put in so much effort to get so subtle a result just baffles me.

Randolph Herr