John Rutoskey's recent excellent discussion of the capabilities of
the M roll was a delight to read.  Further elaboration of contrasts
between O and M rolls by Craig Brougher were also enlightening.  In
passing, Rutoskey refers to the similarity of M and H rolls, and how
they share many of the same design advantages over O rolls.

While the H roll uses the 6-to-the-inch punch as do A and G rolls,
its 15-1/4-inch width keeps it from being duplicated with the same
ease as standard width rolls.  Since there is no regular supply of
rolls (Terry Borne's and Dave Ramey's recuts were limited, one-time
offers), nobody (other than Ramey) bothers to build new H roll
orchestrions.

Is the fact that O rolls were more common than M back in the heyday of
orchestrions, the reason that many recuts of O rolls were made and so
few were made of M rolls?  Play-Rite did some M rolls since they could
be run on the same perforators that produced O Rolls.  Given
Rutoskey's encomium for the many points of advantage of the M roll
over the O, why weren't M rolls more often recut?  Home-built recent
commercially-produced orchestrions have almost invariably been O
rather than M.  Would there have been more M roll orchestrions built
in the past two decades if there had been more M rolls available to
play them?

 [ It's likely.  I suspect John Malone only had a library of O-rolls
 [ to offer the folks building simple orchestrions.  -- Robbie

Clearly, one way to research roll performance would be for MMDers to
take Craig Brougher's advice and buy a copy of his most useful and
provocative orchestrion book (unsolicited plug) and build their own.
His book is a great source of ideas on how to do things pneumatically.

Stan Rhine
Albuquerque, New Mexico