Hi y'all.  Firstly my sincere thanks to all those who responded to my
request for sources of fish glue.  I have already ordered some and it's
on its way.

Then -- and I almost hesitate to comment on Les Plagmann's cry for help
-- regarding methods of replacing cylinder pins, I must assume that
there appear articles once in a while that are intended to be funny.
Les, you were trying to be funny, weren't you.  Say yes, please !!!

Regarding the fact that the 65-note rolls have bigger holes, you must
remember that "they were there first" and had more room to work with,
which gave stronger rolls and the tracker bars were easier to fabri-
cate, having to solder nipples to their back.  Look once on the
inside of the tracker bar of an 88-note player.  It takes a contortion-
ist solderer to attach the nipples.  I don't know of course for sure,
but logic seems to indicate that.

As far as the size of the holes is concerned, once you have a hole many
times the area of a bleeder hole it does not matter whether the hole is
a little smaller or not.  On some tracker bars the shape of the edge or
front of the hole may have some influence on the response time, I
assume, but I have never really been able to note any practical
difference.

Remember, there was stiff competition between manufacturers and sales
gimmicks and lofty claims were abound.  It was also because of this
competition that "the state of the art" of automatic players was being
advanced so rapidly, giving us today the large variety of these
beautiful ingenious devices, we all are falling in love with.

I have converted a 65-note to an 88-note and the most challenging
aspect of the conversion was to add thirteen more pneumatics and their
controlling valves, etc.  I am sure that most of you are aware that
some manufacturers in the change-over phase made instruments that
could play both sizes (two tracker bars).

Just for what it's worth.  Have a nice day, I know I will!

Albert de Boer