•A friend in New York City is moving and is looking to give away perhaps 20 to 30 player piano rolls of the 65-note variety. Telephone Eric at 1-646-309-5967. Randolph Herr New York

•Here is an amazing video from 1929 of Ohman and Arden playing a wonderful piece called "Try And Play It". It certainly resembles "Kitten On The Keys", but it is still great. I am amazed that any video of the two boys playing has surfaced at all. Are there more? Incidentally, I cannot find any info ...

•Here is a link to a video showing a musical secretary-cabinet that is really worth looking at. Some really ingenious tricks here: http://www.youtube.com/embed/MKikHxKeodA?rel=0 Randolph Herr [ Roentgens' "Queen Marie Antoinette's Automaton" plays music at [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=ends...

•I suggest getting rid of all the lead as soon as possible; and be sure to wear a dust mask. Cut the lead in the middle, and then figure out the best way to remove it from behind the tracker bar, and do it dozens of times. Then figure out the best way to remove the lead from the nipples on the end, ...

•Hi Ross and Robbie: I have a video of a roll of this song on my YouTube channel, "Aeolian Hall". If you like it, I can loan it to my friends to make into a MIDI. The fine [phono record] version that Robbie pointed out yesterday leaves out a pretty memorable part of the lyrics, which I find both hil...

•Hi there: If you think you might be able to sit somewhere for an hour or two of scissors work, you don't even need the punch. I like to listen to audio books, but you can listen to whatever. Randolph Herr

•There is a chemical cleaner called "Kaboom" that has an amazing cleaning action on copper based metals like brass and bronze. It is normally sold as a de-scaling agent for plumbing fixtures, and there are multiple products that are virtually the same. I do not believe the addition of phosphorus to ...

•I was looking over a piano roll auction recently, and saw a roll called "Brown Skin (Who Yo For?)", by Mills, and I figured if I got it for my bid it would be worth at least looking at. It's played by Zema Randale, a great pianist who I heard died in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Well, I just put...

•Even I find it tempting to refer to a 'half Duo-Art' as a 'Single Art' or 'Solo-Art' piano. That is because the Duo in Duo-Art refers to the two methods of using the machine. It can run automatically from a Duo-Art roll, which represents the Art of the Pianist who recorded it, or it can be continuo...

•I'm looking for QRS roll 10-560, "Right Back Where We Started From", done by Maxine Nightingale, 1976. Gary Randolph

•Can anyone tell me where is a good place to find QRS piano rolls that are not being made now? Gary Randolph

•Randolph Herr shared an amusing story about an inventive way to make all the piano keys "work". (Incidentally, the chances are this piano had 85, not 88 keys, to begin with.) However, his sweeping condemnation, "they were junk when they were new, and now a technician has to work with 100-year-old j...

•Randolph Herr wrote: > If you are familiar with pianos, you know that occasionally you > run across these things. > > Perhaps there is nothing wrong in theory with this design, but in > practice it is the most despised piano in the trade, even more than > square grands! Some square grands do not de...

•[ Randolph Herr wrote in 000530 MMD: ] > In his first biography, [George Gershwin] is quoted as saying > that he remembers that when he was 10 years old, he heard an > automatic piano in a penny arcade playing "Melody in F". This > would have been around 1909. Most probably it was the "Melodie in F...

•Randolph Herr wrote: > "You must remember hot glue," I said to him. > "I sure do," he said, "and I hate it." If Frank Deutschman ever had to crack open Simplex or Coinola valve blocks that somebody used anything but hot glue to rebuild, he might have had another opinion. Stephen Kent Goodman ...

•Randolph Herr asked [000828 MMDigest]: > I recently came across a beautiful item in Connecticut that is engraved > "Annie Mand Votey" from the late 1800's. Does anybody know if she was > related to Edwin Votey who helped perfect the Pianola? Did he live in > Connecticut? Any information or leads wi...

•Randolph -- We had a Friends of the Pianola Institute committee meeting today and I mentioned your enquiry. Rex Lawson says you can find a lot of Voteys simply by putting the word into a search engine on the Web, which he's already done. There is, for example, a Votey Building at the University of ...

•Randolph, It saddens me to see this kind of thing happen to you or anyone on eBay or elsewhere. As a collector, a buyer, and yes a long time eBay seller (don't stop reading yet folks), I feel deeply about your situation. As an ardent reader of MMD over the past few years, I remember your past posti...

•Randolph Herr's photos of the Seeburg MO mortuary organ are now at the MMD Pictures site, and probably some more will be added when restoration gets underway. See http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/seeburgMO.html Robbie Rhodes

•Randolph Herr wrote, in regard to the effect of the sustain pedal on volume: "It seems to me that he is saying the volume is the same (the height of the curve) but it is perceived louder because of the longer sustain. I do not think that the area under the curves is of paramount importance since th...