After reading Hal Davis' fine article on roll destroying devices, a.k.a.
automatic tracking devices, I decided to conduct an experiment myself.

Although it had occurred to me in the past that a top spool wandering
back and forth during playing can only be bad news, I never really took
the initiative to investigate the situation by conducting tests.  It
seemed very logical to me that rewinding a roll that had been weaving the
entire time it played was going to be shredded when it re-rolled.  That
has been the case for me in the past on several occasions.  Everyone is
familiar with the ffft fffft fffft fffft sound on one flange, then fffft
fffft fffft fffffft on the other, left, right, left, right, until it is
hopefully all back on the top spool in one piece.

I don't care how well you adjust the tracking device, especially the
four-eyed monsters as I believe Hal put it, that roll will move left and
right with every inconsistency.  Some of the better ones are the Aeolian
feeler ear type that don't touch the edge of the roll at all.  You can
play moderately edge damaged rolls with these to your hearts' content
assuming the paper still rolls straight from spool to spool.  Best of all
are the ones that move the tracker bar, or both the top AND bottom spools
(Story and Clark).

The prize for the worst tracker of all is the one-eared Hardman.  This
menace keeps pushing the roll up against the tracker ear opening the
valve.  This in turn makes the tracker pneumatic leak, letting the roll
go away from the ear, sealing it again.  Of course this sets the
pneumatic in motion again, and as a result, the roll spool wanders left
and right throughout the entire piece! Unbelievable.

It just so happens that we have a Hardman in the shop right now.  Every
time I played a roll on it I would hold my breath and silently pray that
I would be able to recover that roll.  I decided that I would see what
happened if I disabled the tracker mechanism and solidly fixed the music
roll drive chuck.  I could not believe the difference.  I can say that I
played through about 50 rolls last night, and not one of them even came
close to giving trouble.  Even those Ideal green papers and the brittle
Internationals re-rolled fine.  It was great-- the paper just went from
top to bottom so perfectly.

I cannot believe what a difference it made just disabling the tracker and
fixing the spool drive firmly.  No more fffft fffft ffffft on the flanges
as the paper tries vainly to respool itself.  No more tiny tears on the
margins.  All I did was loosen the roll slightly on the core, drop the
drive end firmly on a hard surface a few times to make sure ALL of the
roll is against the drive end (as the directions have said on roll boxes
for about 100 years-- very important and should always be done anyway).
After adjusting the tracker bar for the first roll, I never had to touch
it again.  For what it's worth, I'd rather move my tracker bar once in a
while, or put up with the occasional discord (which I never encountered
all night) than tear up my rolls.  It was such a joy.  I can't believe I
did not try this before.

To be fair, I know tracking devices were originally put there to help,
not destroy.  When our rolls were new, the paper was not nearly as
fragile; and it was running between two shiny new, unwarped Bakelite
flanges.  By the way, a quick cure for the warped flange is to snap off
that edge with a pair of pliers-- then play the roll through, and
re-spool when it's over.  If the roll tracks straight, the edge of the
Bakelite will not catch or damage it, even on reroll.

These days our old rolls do not need it any harder than it already is to
be re-rolled.  I am not saying that I am going to disable trackers from
pianos that I restore in the future, nor am I yet to disable the ones I
have in some of the other pianos I own.  It was just an experiment to see
what would happen, and perhaps a guide in helping me find a solution to
ending unnecessary roll damage.  I will say it was very obvious to me
that my rolls were having a much better time last night with a stationary
roll spool than they were before.  If anyone else has experienced this, I
would be interested in hearing about it.

P. S. -- Wouldn't a nice small business niche be had by repairing torn
music rolls for collectors? I would have enough to keep someone in
business for many years!

Just my experience,

John D. Rutoskey
Automatic Music Machines
Baltimore, Maryland