I have been corresponding with a man in Russia who bought a
German-made player piano.  According to him, there are few player
pianos in Russia and piano tuners won't tune them and advise
trashing the player mechanism.  Sound familiar?!

He has only two piano rolls, one is "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" by
Liszt, the other is a Beethoven quartet.  Both are Animatic rolls.
I could not find any reference to Animatic rolls and I am wondering
if they were reproducing or expression rolls.  His piano has some
extra levers at the keyboard but I haven't translated the labels yet.

We are having some difficulty with words.  He stated the striker
bellows were covered with paper.  I suspect something is missing in
this translation.  His English is quite good.  Has anyone encountered
bellows covered in some type of paper?

Bill Chapman -
in sunny La Quinta, Calif., 88 deg. F. today, humidity a whopping 21%

 [ MMD articles about the Hupfeld Animatic player system are
 [ indexed at http://www.mmdigest.com/archives/KWIC/A/animatic.html 
 [ See also the series of technical articles by Richard Stibbons at
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Gallery/Sounds/stibbons01.html  -- Robbie