Bridging
By Karl Petersen
About 1971 the Player Piano Co. came out with a series of Ampico recuts which had unusual bridging (and came in beautiful, heavyweight boxes). These otherwise looked like Powell rolls punched by Malone. At the next So.Cal. Amica meeting, Powell made his (only?) appearance to let the assemblage know that these rolls were made on Powell's own equipment and should not be purchased. Powell was doubted because of the difference in the chaining, but he said that the electronic chain generator could be set to make the leading punch and the chain punch any length, independently.
Shortly later, George Coade was hoping to clean up the punching method he was using for duplicating, I think, Philips Paganini rolls, and I designed a mechanical chaining escapement to go in the punch control line. It would skip two, punch six holes continuously then skip 2, punch 1, skip 2, punch 1, and so on until the control was released, then punch one to finish. The initial skip 2 made up for the final punch 2. This was a rotary ratchet device inspired by a ball point pen actuator. Unfortunately, only one prototype was built and I lost contact before George got a look at it.
With Wayne Stahnke's remastering, you actually know where the music events are on the roll, and, it seems to me, you could adjust the chaining to optimize roll strength. I have not seen any instrument on which the extended notes do anything other than sustain. I did post a discussion about controlling the intensity by the length of the leading perforation, though, and still have the hardware to demonstrate that.
OK, Karl B. Ellison, tag, you're it!
Karl A. Petersen
kap@firedragon.com |
(Message sent Mon 28 Oct 1996, 13:02:31 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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