•Hello to All, I'm new to the list, so I'll briefly introduce myself. I'm Tony Greer, and I live in Texas, where I have lived all my life. I have been in the neon glassblowing business for the past 23 years, where I supply local sign companies with neon for use in the signs they make. I also like to...

•Hi Terry, Aeolian produced a pipe organ player and accompanying rolls for many of their residence organs. The installation would have either a small spoolbox that would accommodate a roll 10-1/8" wide or a large spoolbox that would accommodate a roll 15-1/4" wide. The small roll had two rows of hol...

•Hi All, In answer to Annalisa's question, regular 88-note QRS music rolls _should_ play just fine on a Duo-Art Reproducing piano as long as the Duo-Art switch (in the spoolbox) is turned to 'Off'. However, the 'tracking' problem is a totally different matter. In my experience, a fairly consistent p...

•Sometime back I reported on my Smith Lyraphone pushup piano play of circa 1900, and I was wondering about the reason behind the varying spacing and width of the tracker bar slots. This is a 65-note unit, and the roll width is 13-1/4 inches. There are four different hole widths (rectangular slots), ...

•I have an old roll. I know it is old, because on the outside bottom of the box, there are two dates stamped. One date is Jun. 16, 1915, the other is Jul. 15, 1915. The roll is from QRS, Chicago; the tune is "Gladiolus Rag"; no roll number at all; the paper is a light gray colour and fairly well wax...

•The cores may be more important than the paper. A friend of mine had a player pipe organ from the '20s that had many rolls, but few of them had endings because the cores had ruined the paper. I've been buying recuts since Larry Givens began making them. I've bought from most of the different recutt...

•The dimensional stability of paper with regards to moisture content is obviously an important issue, and always was to judge by old adverts. Dry wax paper is good in this respect because the wax prevents moisture take-up and gives very stable dimensions in the sauna-to-furnace conditions some users...

•Hello, There are some differences in the way UK and USA Duo-Art mechanisms were made and some believe that the coding was different on the rolls for each market even those rolls that came from the same note masters. Therefore the rolls made for the UK market may play better on a UK built piano and ...

•Hello All, I was considering responding to the contribution about the airtightness of fuzz back bellows cloth which appeared recently in MMD. Since I had just completed several projects using this material, with as-expected good results, I decided to do some experimentation to attempt to recreate t...

•My sister bought an upright player piano a year or two ago, from someone who claimed to be a good rebuilder, and further claimed that the piano was in excellent shape. Two weeks after she got it home, little flies started showing up in her house. Hunting down the source, she found that there was so...

•Hi All, Debbie Legg's posting, about the problems she is having with a player piano she rebuilt, reminded me of a posting I sent to the MMDigest some years ago. In the posting, I mentioned some of the criteria that I recalled reading in the Steinway Limited Lifetime Warranty in the 1970's. Back the...

•I recently bought a set of all nine Beethoven Symphonies, a collection of 38 rolls, from a dealer in England. They are in perfect condition, but a few questions have come up. These rolls were made by Aeolian in England, and if you are familiar with their rolls, you will know that they were made on ...

•Today I was at an estate sale inspecting a Hammond player piano, serial nr. 22759, which according to the plate was made by the Straube Piano Co. The action is a Standard player action. The piano looks to me to be well-built, or at least average to better than average quality. It has what appear to...

•Hi All, I've said this before, but it bears repeating. When you're in a trade of any kind, people are bound to ask you to do things that might offend your sensibilities. At that point in time, you have a choice. You can try to change their mind, you can do what they ask, you can leave, or you can t...

•Resistance to rollscanning and roll duplication The thread for rollscanning is moving along nicely in MMD. I thought that the group might be interested in hearing one view that hasn't been raised yet concerning both rollscanning and roll duplication. In my pursuit of Violano rolls, I have located t...

•Hi all, I read with interest Andrew Ott's posting in the July 5 posting in the MMD about storing music rolls and I think Jack Breen and a few others have said it very well about rubber bands, but I will add my two cents worth also. But first I will address a few of the other questions that Andrew a...

•MMD, I'm sorry but I think a couple contributors greatly exaggerated some of the negative characteristics of the use of the rubber band on piano rolls. In defense of rubber bands, in total they do more good than harm. I also have examined and repaired thousands of rolls; probably in excess of 5000...

•I spoke with Dave Smith last week and saw some pictures of the damaging flood at his shop. Let me tell you, it made me shudder to see the shop (and especially the instruments) laying in disarray after floating (or sinking) in three to four feet of cold, muddy water. Even the things that were high a...

•Joe Hutter indicates in MMD 06.07.20 that the Ampico pedal pneumatic operates sluggish due to the inlet tubes being 3/8-inch in diameter. The piano is a grand player from his description. He wants to fix it by increasing the nipple and hose sizes going to the sustain pneumatic. This may be true, Jo...

•I have been reading the various suggestions to remedy the sluggish Ampico Pedal pneumatic, but so far no one has mentioned the bleed in the unit valve controlling the pedal pneumatic might be plugged with dust. Remove the two valves, and check the one that has the bleed to see that it is clean. Whi...