Hi there,

This will be short, as I'm camping on a remote lake in Maine, running
e-mail on our cell 'phone setup (at 2400 bps modem speed).  (I just
"do" standard e-mail when on the road ... while avoiding URLs and/or
URL-mail (Hotmail, WebMail etc.) due to the air time costs and slowness
of the system.)

Anyway - the Super-Simplex (usually after 1926 ... and through the
early 1930's) was an attachable grand player mechanism ... either
installed by the Conway factories (Hallet & Davis, esp.) or sold to
technicians who could attach it with very little difficulty - just
requiring a few screws. Everything is "in the drawer" except the rotary
pump and the sustaining pedal mechanism in most cases; there is no
separate stack or expression unit, for example. After 1927, Kohler
purchased the Conway/Simplex operation in Worcester, Mass. and
continued with line until the mid 1930's.

The typical Super-Simplex was usually an Angelus (formerly
Artrio-Angelus by Wilcox & White) 'reproducing' piano ... most with
rolls cut by Aeolian/QRS with elaborate leaders featuring the famous
scene from the Millet painting. Simplex piano technician and EXPERT on
this style of player - Kirk Russell in Rhode Island - has a FANTASTIC
1918 Hallet & Davis grand piano with the Super-Simplex Angelus
'reproducing' system (added after 1921, most probably, when Simplex
took over the defunct Wilcox & White business).  People are still
speaking about this particular instrument, which he brought to the '89
Boston AMICA player club convention ... and it's the FINEST of its
kind I've heard to date.  This is not an easy player to rebuild, due
to the compression of all the parts in the drawer, which has a unique
roller system for activating the piano keys. One of the features on
Kirk's piano which is unusual is the addition of a "Graduated
Accompaniment" lever: you can set the overall texture of the music,
and then superimpose the Theme and/or additional Accompaniment over
this selective norm. That's a hand device for interpreting 88-Note
rolls, of course.(The Angelus 'reproducing' player uses the same kind
of solo system which Aeolian called the Themodist and Hupfeld in
Germany named the Solodant; the Angelus version was called the
Melodant.)

Some installations were 'Recordo' players, but these are not as common.

Both styles would play 88-Note rolls, of course.

One had a choice of either action ... just as with the Standard
Pneumatic version: 'Recordo' vs. Welte-Licensee -- Kimball and other
makes, including Schulz: Aria Divina (Recordo) vs. Welte-Licensee.

    Hope that answers your questions.

    Regards, (signed) Douglas

http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/