[ John and Larry Broadmoore exchanged letters about the PowerRoll.

At 09:43  7/19/98 -0700, Larry Broadmoore wrote:

Dear John,  Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you.  One misleading
tendency is to group PowerRoll with solenoid player systems which push
piano keys with solenoid plungers, which has the effect of vaguely
conferring upon it the opprobrium which is sometimes richly deserved by
certain solenoid player systems.

I have had to repeatedly explain that PowerRoll is only an accessory
for pneumatic player pianos, and that its only function is that of
opening and closing tracker bar holes.

As a restorer of pneumatic automatic instruments, I do not install
solenoid player systems nor am I particularly a fan of them, except for
a couple of outstanding exceptions I have seen demonstrated in
laboratory facilities (they can play well if done correctly, but rarely
are); our product deals with pneumatic systems only.

The PowerRoll is really in effect, a way to encourage and enable people
to use the old type pneumatic systems more; so the idea that it somehow
replaces them is patently absurd!

One of the biggest fears prospective PowerRoll customers have is of
obsolescence, and rightly so.  Who among us has not bought an expensive
piece of electronic equipment, whether a sound system or a computer
accessory, only to find that it is worthless a couple of years later?

I have spent my entire working career, over 32 years, restoring
automatic musical instruments, and admiring their durability and
longevity.  So, when I decided to manufacture a product to be used with
them, I gave much thought to the question of how to build it so that it
would be around many years later and still in good working order.

After choosing the finest, time-tested materials and techniques for
construction I could find and adding plenty of overkill (making things
thicker, stronger and longer-lasting than they need to be), and finding
a talented electronics engineer to work with who is a perfectionist and
is as quality- and longevity-minded as I am, there was only one other
way to ensure longevity of the product: by means of unconditional
guarantees against problems.  I made this "legally" for five years just
because of the unknowns in a changing business world, but as a
practical matter, if someone has a problem in ten or even twenty years,
which I feel was my fault due to poor design or poor choice of
available materials, I will fix it at no charge.  That is the way I run
my player restoration business, and I have never had cause to regret
it.

I added a two-year guarantee against obsolescence by promising free
exchanges for that time to customers who buy it while it is relatively
new, should we make changes or improvements.  By that time people will
obviously know that the product is absolutely stable, that it is
thoroughly protected by sound, ironclad guarantees, and that it is
unlikely to need further substantive revision.

I'm sure that you did not mean it this way, but the offhand remark you
made in a public forum implying that PowerRoll is vulnerable to
obsolescence, makes my job of reassuring an already skeptical public of
the fact that we will not allow them to be hurt, even more difficult.
This is the effect, and we have to be vigilant about what is said about
the product because misstatements sometimes travel faster than the
truth.

After a discussion of the Pianocorder, your idea was that PowerRoll's
use of floppies renders it vulnerable to obsolescence.  This is quite
misleading and, I think, unfair.

Since PowerRoll is not at all limited to the use of floppies to
operate, if they ceased to exist tomorrow we would continue as though
nothing had happened.  It also runs on data stored in CD-ROMs, on hard
disks, and could run just as well from magnetic tape, or even wire on a
wire recorder from the 1930's!

If a different data storage method became the standard every year,
PowerRoll could adapt to the changes quite easily.

The point is that its data storage method is incidental to PowerRoll's
operation.  We have played music roll scans made on magnetic tape, from
Ampico rolls in the early 1970's, and they often play better than the
paper rolls from which they were made (despite their comparatively low
scanning resolution).  Data storage media capable of operating
PowerRoll have been around for sixty or seventy years, longer than some
of the player pianos I have had to completely restore!  If this is
obsolescence, I think we need not be too concerned about it.

Larry Broadmoore

 - - -

Hi Larry,  What I find most curious about your negative response to my
MMD posting is the fact that I was actually attempting to extol the
virtue of The PowerRoll system (which you know I feel is excellent).

Do to a lack of information and being under the misconception that the
system used ONLY floppy discs as the data storage medium, I included
the remark about upgrading.

In effect Larry, what I've done is help you to see a flaw in your
advertising campaign and presentation of the device to the public.
Having asked you numerous questions about the system in previous
letters, you never once mentioned the systems flexibility with regards
to data storage.  Furthermore, I think that some people will view your
'public' response incorrectly since you didn't elaborate the
flexibility aspect like you did in your letter to me.  If you'll recall,
I was the first person to respond with great excitement and interest to
your posting about PowerRoll.  And as I said then, I think it's the
wave of the future for people with pneumatic players who get tired of
changing rolls every five minutes.

Therefore, in the interest of enlightening everybody, I am c.c.'ing
this entire letter to the MMD.

Musically,

John A. Tuttle (john@player-care.com)

 - - -

 [ Larry replied in closing:
 [
 [> John -- Many thanks, all's well that ends well.
 [>
 [> Larry
 [
 [
 [ More clarification:
 [
 [ The data storage medium for the PowerRoll device is not paper,
 [ therefore it's better described as "plays Ampico rolls which have
 [ been transcribed to electronic storage media such as floppy disk
 [ or CD-ROM."
 [
 [ The input to the PowerRoll is a MIDI wireline signal, which comes
 [ from the customer-supplied disk reader or computer sequencer program,
 [ etc.  The MIDI-wireline signal is as well-established now as the
 [ 5-level and 8-level teleprinter signal, which is approaching 80 years
 [ old and is still going.  MIDI signals will be around for a long,
 [ long time.
 [
 [ -- Robbie