As a new MMD subscriber I thought I should introduce myself.  My name
is Rob Montgomery and I live in Chino Hills, California, (about forty
miles east of Los Angeles) with my wife and three children.  Mechanical
Music is a new hobby for me, having purchased my first instrument about
a year ago: a 1926 5'4" Knabe Ampico.  Since then I have been reading
everything I can find related to the Ampico and other mechanical
musical instruments.

I've also been collecting "all things Ampico" including music rolls,
books, recordings, original publications and advertisements.  I've been
lurking in the archives here at MMD for nearly a year now and decided
that it's time to finally subscribe.

My "day job" for the past 20+ years has been working as an electrical
engineer for a few different aerospace and communications companies.
My background is hardware design, but I have also dabbled a little in
software over the years.

Since acquiring my piano about a year ago, I have done some minor
repairs to the Ampico system, but nothing that would be classified as
restoration or rebuild.  I was fortunate to find a piano that had not
been previously restored and was in amazingly good condition.  The
Ampico system needs a complete rebuild (it has a number of obvious
problems including a weak pump), but everything works and in most cases
the original components are actually still in pretty good condition.
At least 4 or 5 rolls are played on it every week.

The piano has spent its whole 80+ year life in Southern California and
evidently the mild and relatively dry climate was good for it.  When
I first removed the belly cloth, I was amazed to find that it still had
a leather drive belt on it.  A complete rebuild of both the piano and
Ampico system are planned, but I'm in no real hurry at this point.

I've also been lurking in the Yahoo Roll Scanners group.  I've been
playing around with roll scan to MIDI conversion and studying Ampico
expression coding techniques.  I've only started to scratch the surface
relative to understanding Ampico roll editing and expression coding,
but I've been having fun working on algorithms to convert MIDI
velocities to Ampico expression codes -- a tough but interesting
problem.  I figure that if I keep working on it and learning more about
the techniques used by the original Ampico A and B roll editors, maybe
someday I'll be able to get reasonably good conversions.

I joined MBSI last year and plan to become active in the local
activities this year.  I also recently joined AMICA.  I look forward
to meeting some of you at local Southern California MBSI & AMICA events
this year.

In addition to introducing myself, I want to thank everyone who makes
MMD possible.  I have been lurking in the MMD archives for months now
and I have found MMD to be an incredibly valuable resource.  My sincere
thanks go out to Jody, Robbie and all of the contributors that freely
provide their insight, knowledge and experience.

Well, I guess that's about it.  I just wanted to say hello and thanks
for all of the help.

Rob Montgomery