Hi MMD family, Bill Shirley here.  Again MMDers have been generous in
their response to my request for information for modern-day reproducing
of Edison vertical cut disks.

I would like to pick up the thread of recently mentioned push-up type
65-note piano players.  About 20 years ago I received some information
concerning a conversion by replacing the 65-note tracker bar with an 88
note capacity tracker bar, but have never tried it.

As I recall from these long lost instructions,  the musical notes that
fell outside the still restricted 65-note range were T-tubed up or down
an octave to be played, albeit not in the original low bass or high
treble positions on an 88 note roll.

I have a Metrostyle Pianola 65-note push-up with one (count it ) one
cotton-pickin' roll.  As y'all know (that's the way we talk in the
Southern Oklahoma - North Texas area) compatible 65-note rolls are
hen's teeth scarce.

At the risk of defiling a something holy, and risking an outcry
that could be heard from Dallas to Wiscasset, I have entertained the
conversion bit over the years, but then each time I am reminded by
what I've read in the literature about these early players: (this
information was found in Dr. William B. White's 1925 book, Piano Playing
Mechanisms) early designers, lacking the air-tight and light-weight
materials that came later, apparently needed the larger duct size of
the 65-note tracker bar in order to admit enough air to quickly inflate
its corresponding pouch and lift a rather bulky valve to cause its
rather bulky pneumatic to collapse quickly enough.

Have any of you heard of or even tried such a conversion?  Could it
be that with our current lighter weight, air-tight materials, the air
admitted by a smaller 88 note tracker bar duct would activate these
original but restored mechanisms efficiently?  If I unearth the
original paper work in my current cleaning out of my work shop, I'll
share with you the verbatim instructions.

But then again if I'm really serious,  I could possibly have the
Broadmoore Research Corporation devise me a PowerRoll interface for
a 65-note tracker bar or use an Inline model.

Bill Shirley
Ardmore, Oklahoma  73401  U.S.A
bshirley@ardmore.com

 [ Try this experiment: Place a long strip of Scotch tape along the
 [ length of the tracker bar so that it reduces the height of the
 [ tracker bar hole to one-half, and see how it plays!  -- Robbie