I am in the preliminary stages of designing a roll scanning and punching system and am hoping to anticipate and avoid format compatibility problems. I would appreciate any information on punch step increments used to produce the old rolls. I plan to start with Duo-Art rolls duplication, but would li...

•I received this note from a person outside the mechanical music field on an idea for more-or-less automating the cutting of music rolls. Since I know nothing about the "stencil cutting" machine he mentions, I am posting it to MMD to see what you think about the feasibility: "After seeing the show i...

•A few days ago, a subscriber to MMD asked about the punch advances of the common reproducing piano rolls. As it turns out, there have been three submissions to the Digest regarding this matter, which I found easily by using the Foxtail archive search engine. They are as follows: (1) "Ampico Step Ad...

•Sometime in the 70's AMICAn Sally Lawrence picked up several 20-note music boxes at a close-out sale, and we bought one from her. It is a German-made Steinbach, powered by a 3-volt battery. It stands about 10 inches tall, 7 inches wide and 4 inches deep, with a wooden case decorated with "organ pip...

•Hi, all. Sankyo makes two models of punched paper strip musical movements. Both are hand-cranked, but could be fitted to operate from a small motor, as does the Mr. Christmas 'continuous' paper strip musical box. One Sankyo movement, Model TDM213, plays a 15-note comb and the other, Model TDM202, p...

•Curiosity got the better of me, so I opened up the Steinbach "Punch-a-Tune" to see what kind of movement it had. Not surprisingly, it was the ubiquitous Sankyo. Bob Billings

•I purchased Bob Essex's plans for an X-Y punch machine. The idea is quite simple as it uses a single solenoid punch for the "x" axis and the paper/card is pulled through the machine for "y". This is done with stepper motors. The electronics, while not terribly complex, are beyond my skills, since I...

•If you can adapt a standard die to the book punch, your best bet would probably be Roper Whitney. They make all kinds of punch die sets for manual and machine punches. In addition to the custom clearances for metal, they can custom fit a die to the clearance required for other materials. There are ...

•A while ago someone from the US contacted me about a punch machine for organ books. Now I do have several new machines ready, but I'm afraid I have lost his letter and his address. Can you please put this message on your web site so he can contact us again at Thank you very much for your help, Will...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- I recently came across the Punch-a-Tune toy "barrel organ" I had as a boy in the 1970s, but no battery. What type of battery does this require? I saw postings on your web site about this. Jacob Hugart [ Bob Billings wrote that the movement is "th...

•The battery is a No. 3710 - 3V - 2R10. The ones I have are 'Varta', distributed in Great Britain by Varta Ltd, Cropmead Industrial Estate, Crewkerne, Somerset TA 18 7HQ, and in France by Varta S.A., 92403 Courbevoie. I try to pick up one or two batteries any time I am in Europe, but I would expect ...

•Hello Jacob, I have a similar box, "Music In Motion", with Christmas songs from "Mr. Christmas". It had a 120-volt AC to 3-volt DC adapter. Here we have 220 VAC electric power. I use an adapter with an output of 3 volts DC or 4.5 volts DC. If I choose the 3-volt DC output it is a little bit too slo...

•John Tuttle asked what 65-note punch size he should recommend for an art project. That depends more on the art than what size hole(s) were used -- they were all over the map. I've done some research on 65-note hole sizes to determine the one to use for my 6/inch punch and die set that is in the wor...

•John Tuttle asked the size of the punch used for cutting the holes in a 65-note music roll. I believe if the music is to play well, the question really should be, "What should be the length of the web (bridge) between adjacent repeating note holes?" Too often I hear a nicely restored orchestrion th...

•Robbie Rhodes makes a good point regarding the choice of a punch diameter for 6-holes-per-inch music rolls. Fortunately my 6/inch punch and die project is not to the stage where I must settle on a punch size. Buying the punches and reaming the die is nearly the last step, after all the supporting h...

•In a private communication, Bob Taylor raised the issue of 65-note punch size in relation to tracking errors. Larger punch sizes will be more likely to cause false notes than smaller ones if the roll doesn't track well. Any thoughts on how much tracking error should be allowed for? I'd like to keep...

•Bob Billings asked, and Robbie echoed, that 6-to-the-inch holes don't need to be any larger than 9-to-the-inch holes. While that might be true for 'newer' 65-note pianos, and also for G-roll-playing orchestrions, my Aeolian Orchestrelle is very sensitive to different hole size because of its 'ice-p...

•The hole size in paper music rolls has been debated ever since Ed Freyer made recuts with small holes. One argument is that because most coin pianos playing the A or G roll have larger bleeds in them. The small holes in the recuts would effect the instruments ability to repeat notes. Small holes at...

•I think the reason for such large holes in 65-note music was to match the size of the bleeds in the valves. I say this because there was a time when Ed Freyer was making recuts for coin pianos, and while the hole spacing was correct for 6-to-the inch, the perforation size was much narrower than the...

•In view of the recent interest in reconstructing the original punch matrix from scans of music rolls, I have decided to release my reconstruction tools, Improve and Restore, to anyone who can make use of them. These programs are highly evolved and have been used successfully with a wide variety of ...