In 1905, Louis Severson opened a small repair shop in Chicago,
servicing coin pianos built by other manufacturers.  In 1909, he
incorporated the Operators Piano Company, and began selling coin
pianos that played A rolls.

By 1914, Operators offered a whole line of Coinola orchestrions
that played O rolls.  The style X was the most elaborate, with piano,
mandolin attachment, orchestra bells, bass drum with timpani effect,
tap cymbal (playing along with the bass drum beater), snare drum with
reiterating and single stroke beaters, wood block and triangle.
Other models had one or two ranks of pipes, or a set of harmonium
reeds, instead of the orchestra bells.  Some models had fewer or no
percussions.  All O roll machines had at least one extra instrument.
All muted piano solo range when any extra instrument was on.

Keyboard style O roll orchestrions had 12 octave-coupled bass notes
and played all the way to the highest A in the treble.  All solo
instruments played from the highest 24 playing notes on the piano
stack.  Pipes (or rarely, reeds) played one octave below their
associated piano notes.  Bells (and later, xylophones) played at
the same pitch as their associated piano notes.

In March, 1920, Operators introduced the CO and SO.  The tall
keyboard-style CO had xylophone instead of orchestra bells, plus the
same untuned percussions as the X, with the addition of a tambourine.
The large keyboardless SO had the instrumentation of the CO plus a
crash cymbal.  These weren't commercially successful because they were
introduced after the beginning of prohibition, when small instruments
were favored.  This story is told in greater detail in my forthcoming
book "The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments."

Also, the "amplifier" device, a pneumatic attached to the pump spill
valve that increased suction throughout the machine when activated, was
added to certain models at this time.  (Coinolas didn't have primary
valves, and the crash cymbal didn't work very well without the ampli-
fier being turned on.  You'll see in late rolls that the amplifier hole
is punched preceding each crash cymbal hole.  It helps.)  The amplifier
boosts pump suction but has little effect on the piano stack, because
the stack has its own vacuum regulator.

Early O rolls (pre-SO) don't use the tambourine, crash cymbal or
amplifier holes.

From the time the CO and SO were introduced until the end of produc-
tion, most model X orchestrions had xylophone instead of orchestra
bells, and most orchestrions had a piccolo wood block instead of the
standard (lower pitched) wood block.

Some Midget Orchestrions have a piano that goes all the way up to the
highest note on the roll, but don't have the lower coupled octave in
the bass.  Others have the piano that was used in the Seeburg K and
similar pianos, and don't have all the solo notes in the treble.  Watch
your O rolls, and you'll see that many never play the highest octave in
the solo section unless a solo instrument is turned on.

Many O rolls are arranged with single-note solos for the bells (xylo)
and two-note duets for the pipes.  The bell parts have little arpeggios
punched as a series of very short holes here and there, producing a
"grace note" effect leading into the melody note.  In a CO or SO, the
piano mute drops between the hammers and strings when either solo
instrument turns on.  In an X or other orchestrion with only one solo
instrument, most collectors tube their orchestra bells only to their
own lock and cancel, not the pipe lock and cancel, feeling that they're
just too loud to play the pipe duets.  In instruments with pipes only,
it's more common to find the pipes tubed to both solo instrument
control holes.

In my opinion, the piano sounds bad when playing along with the bells
or xylophone, because the inharmonicity in the high piano treble means
that the piano notes are inherently sharper than the properly-tuned
bars.  I also think the solo instrument part sounds strange when played
only by the piano.  A jazz pianist might "noodle around" in the highest
octaves, but no pianist ever played sustained solos or duets up there
-- the tone fades away too fast.

Personally, I don't mind hearing the bells play two notes at once,
provided that they're in the bottom of the piano (where they are in an
X) and the knee panel is closed.  If you prefer to play your
orchestrion with the front open, then you will probably prefer single
stroke bells, especially if you locate them in front of the piano
action.  (Tom Sprague once related the story of an elderly man who
heard his Coinola X with bells play with the front open.  "First music
I've been able to hear in years," he shouted.)  It's not unusual to get
a reading of slightly over 100 decibels within a distance of one or two
feet in front of repeating bells or piccolo pipes.  The reading drops
off substantially when the bells are in the bottom of the cabinet, with
the knee panel in place.

If I gave the impression in "Treasures of Mechanical Music" that I
don't like O rolls, I didn't mean to.  What I don't like is poor
quality O roll music played on machines that don't sound like Coinolas.
As Don Teach and Dave Ramey have said, if you go to all the trouble of
building an orchestrion, why not copy a Coinola, so the music sounds
the way the roll arrangers intended it to?

A properly restored Coinola plays beautifully.  With Seeburg and
Wurlitzer as competitors, Coinola wouldn't have stayed in business
for over twenty years if their products didn't sound good and work
reliably.  It's unfortunate that several well-known writers (going back
as far as the 1960s) have condemned Coinolas, based on observations of
so-so repair work performed on worn-out instruments.

Modern recut O rolls do have some problems, however.  First, the
tracker scale issued by Powell-Malone Associates had incorrect
information for the pipe and bell controls, which corresponded to
incorrect lock & cancel tubing in John Malone's test orchestrion.
I know this because they changed some of the lock and cancel holes in
O rolls that I arranged for them.   If I remember correctly, certain
locks were paired with incorrect cancels, causing the orchestration
to make no sense in a properly-tubed orchestrion.  Presumably they only
made this mistake in their rolls of modern music, and didn't alter the
registration in their recuts of old rolls (?).  If your machine is
tubed according to certain old Powell-Malone catalogs, then it isn't
playing original rolls correctly.

Second, many O roll recuts have been made with two of the percussion
holes (wood block and single stroke snare drum?) punched in advance of
the rest of the holes.  I can't imagine how anyone can enjoy hearing
music with some of the percussions playing ahead of the beat.

Finally, in my opinion the Coinola X and certain other American
orchestrions are severely undervalued and currently represent a
fantastic bargain for the mechanical music enthusiast.  Why spend years
building something that will never have much monetary value, when you
could invest in an authentic piece of mechanical music history and hear
music played the way it was intended to be heard?

Art Reblitz