Re: 980820 MMDigest

Julian Dyer remarked:

> If my feeling about the 1914 catalogue is right, it would certainly
> suggest that 65-note player production must have ceased around the
> same time as the launch of the exclusive 88-note title.  Perhaps you
> could obtain dual-scale instruments for a while longer.  Dan Wilson
> suggests that you could obtain one in the mid 1920s, although I have
> to say I've never encountered one that late.

In 1969 I had been advertising for rolls in the local paper for some
two years and getting six or seven responses a month. I got to see
some remarkable survivals and some remarkable wrecks.

One of the former was in a house in Tunbridge Wells belonging to Mrs
Morell, widow of a well-known magazine illustrator, who was selling
up because of repeated burglaries. Her husband had been as seriously
afflicted with roll collecting as myself, with the funds to indulge
his condition, so that she had a roll _room_, more or less untouched
since the 1940s. In the living room was a gigantic Casson Positive
Organ driven from an Orchestrelle spoolbox and in the roll room, a
demure Steck upright. This piano was not just convertible 65/88,
because of the organ rolls it was 58/65/88 - with a three-position
switch, sliding cheeks on the takeup spool and shutoff pallets ! It
was made new for Mr Morell in 1916. She had all the original invoices
in a box file.

So I think that if you advanced towards them holding out ready money,
Aeolian, like most hotels when they've been frosty on the phone,
would do anything. According to Benet Meakin, (the magisterially
afflicted collector we have recently discussed here) who very nearly
had an accident in his trousers when he heard about this house,
Aeolian in England finally hardened up on making 65-note specials and
conversions for people in about 1924, although I don't know how you
could ever be sure of such a statement.

To judge from the numerous examples in his own collection, the
numbers of dual-standard instruments made by all manufacturers
declined linearly from the introduction of 88-note in England in
1908. (He even had a Steck with an early Melville Clark 88-note
action in it - in UK terms this was like Christianity before Jesus !)
Even in the 1960s, perhaps one in six piano-plus-rolls groupings I
visited were exclusively 65-note, with the owners barely aware there
was a later standard. It's not surprising there was a market for
65-note instruments right up to 1940, even though it was satisfied
entirely by rebuilds.

(Aftermath: I drove away with the rear wheels of the car rubbing the
bodywork with the weight of 65-note rolls, which included all the
Mozart concertos that were issued, while Benet cleaned up everything
else with a hired furniture van. Ah, happy days ...)

Dan Wilson, London