In response to Pat DeWitt.  He mentions his Ampico upright tracks
anything, but the grand with tracker ears will not.  Could it be that
the tubes to the tracker ears on the grand got reversed?  Change them on
the tracker pneumatics, and see if it makes a difference.

The tracker ears should not touch the paper!  There should be a 1/32"
clearance on each side of a properly centered roll.

Before you play a roll, do you tap the slotted end of the spool against
a carpet, to shift the paper evenly on the spool?

Many spool frames can get out of alignment, but more than likely many
of Pat's old rolls may be warped with age.  The edges of old rolls get
soft, and give a false reading while tracking.  That is: the edge of
the old paper is curled a bit, and does not signal the tracker to
engage before it is too late.

You may have seen people remove a roll from a player and tighten it
until the paper squeaks.  It is a bad practice.  This eventually
stretches the roll more on one side than the other, and will make the
roll wander as it winds on the take-up spool.   I have some old rolls
that track perfectly, and others that look good, but wander no matter
what you do to them.  Your problem could be a case of warped paper,
since you say new re-cut rolls will track perfectly.

One thing I have noticed are new cardboard roll cores made wider than
the roll.  This is probably done to preserve the edges of rolls when
they rewind in poorly adjusted pianos, or players with rewind take up
spool brakes.   What it does is to allow the roll to wander upon rewind.
If the paper is allowed to remain in this position, soon the roll will
retain some memory of this random wander and it will stay that way.

When I find a cardboard core which is wider than the paper roll, I play
the roll to the end, and remove the spool, remove the removable end,
and cut the cardboard back about an eighth of an inch shorter than the
roll width.  Hand rewind the roll a bit, and make sure the movable
spool end is pulled out of the way, and rewind the roll.

Tap the slotted spool end on a firm surface, until the roll settles
evenly, and place the movable end firmly against the paper.  The roll
should track much better.

Bruce Clark