•I have an Ampico roll on eBay that readers of MMD might find interesting. It is roll no. 61643-G, Barcarolle in F Sharp Major, by Chopin, played by Julius Chaloff. The roll is in mint condition and plays perfectly, yet someone has added countless hundreds of very tiny gummed tape lengths to the end...

•Hello Robbie: You asked for help identifying the tunes on Breezy Broadway Medley, but when I went to Ben Roth's web page to listen to the roll, there is a picture of the label with all the songs listed. What gives? I have the same roll on 65-note Aeolian and the number is 101452, which is different...

•[ Arlene F. Smart wrote in 041202 MMDigest: ] > The valve box has three primary valves and two secondary valves. > Five tubes come up from underneath. The tracking pneumatic has > two holes, rather than the usual three. It sounds like you have a very early Duo-Art from around 1914. They had a valve...

•A friend asked me to write in to MMD as he is trying to sell an Angelus push-up pianola with a reed organ built in. It is in excellent unrestored shape, complete down to its 65 wooden fingers. It is in a reddish mahogany case that is structurally fine but could use a refinishing. The price is $595...

•Carl Zwanzig asked about instrument movers. I have had good experience with Plycon Movers. They can crate or just blanket wrap objects. They have never damaged anything in the six times I have used them. Their link is: http://www.plyconvanlines.com/start.htm Randolph Herr [ There are many MMD artic...

•You can find John Miller's site at http://www.pianorollstuff.com/ He sells the O-rings that Tom Gregory was looking for. Randolph Herr

•Although I wrote to Jason Fisher giving him my phone number, I think that a short article may help others who want to know about the "Half Duo-Art" Weber that he wrote about. Basically, the first expression mechanism that Aeolian introduced was the Themodist. The fastest way to know if a piano roll...

•I looked in the MMD Archives for the phone number of John Wrasse, the piano mover that several people have said very good things about. I found a listing and when I called it, I was told the number could not be completed as dialed. I looked further back in the Archives and found a very similar numb...

•Three Stories Concerning Mechanical Music I recently saw two things on TV that I thought might be of interest to mechanical music fans, and they reminded me of a third thing that I will save for last, for reasons that will soon be obvious. The first thing is that Turner Classic Movies was showing a...

•I have been reading with interest the latest thread on the Duo-Art cross valves, and I wanted to mention that in the MMD Archives of 2000.04.28, I suggested a possible solution to the problem. So if this subject interests you, it might be worth your while to take a look at it. As long as we are on ...

•Practically everyone in our field has heard of the nightmare that Perflex caused a few decades back. Basically, this new plastic film was touted as the perfect pouch material: it was perfectly airtight, perfectly flexible, and lasted forever. Well, reality reared its ugly head a few years later whe...

•The Aeolian Company introduced a piano-teaching device called the Visuola in the late 1920's. It worked by having tiny electric bulbs light up at the rear of any key that was being played by the piano roll. In this way the students could know where to place their fingers. I am trying to collect any...

•Aeolian always used thin leather as a gasket of sorts between the individual note pneumatics and the deck that they are glued to. I do not think the leather was exactly the same as pouch leather because of the expense. Nowadays, the cost would be really high. I use a piece of paper as a replacement...

•I basically agree with D.L. Bullock on the use of new materials, but I feel that the pendulum can swing too far in either direction. Using traditional materials sounds like the way to play it safe, but a client for whom I rebuilt a player for over 20 years ago now has a stack with pneumatics too st...

•Yes, the GE Silicone I rubber is commonly sold as bathtub caulking. (That's a 'one' and not the letter 'I'. The reason I used that symbol is because GE refers to their rubbers as I and II). This is also a great glue for glass, a notoriously hard substance to glue. I do not use Silicone I rubber for...

•To respond to Roger Waring who wrote about floor heating as affecting a Duo-Art, I would suggest getting a good hygrometer, also called a humidity meter. Perhaps the pouches have not shrunk -- it might be that the wood shrinkage caused by lack of humidity has opened gasket leakage. Also, I think th...

•[ Mark Kinsler wrote in 060113 MMDigest: > P.S.: My music teacher told me yesterday that the only reason we > have the Brandenburg Concertos was that someone noticed that there > were musical notes on the paper they were wrapping around some meat. I never heard the story about the Brandenburg Conce...

•I have never heard of a piano put together this way, but I have a suggestion that may help. Get one or two friends to help you tilt the piano onto its back. Now you can unscrew the very bottom panel, and possibly even the cross piece that has two notches in it for the Damper and Soft pedals. From h...

•[ Jason Fisher wrote: > A friend of mine has the same piano (only a bit later) fitted with > the full Duo-Art system, and I noticed his piano does not have > a primary pouch box mounted behind the spool box in front of the > piano action which mine does. Hello Jason: The Pianola pianos use a double...

•I agree with John Tuttle about the advantages of Phenoseal over shellac [060213 MMDigest], but I have two questions. When I bought this product from Player Piano Co. several years ago, I got the impression that it was PVC-E glue thinned down with water. Does anyone have any information about this? ...