Wolfgang Heisig asks for sources of Triphonola rolls.  These are
unknown in the USA, extremely rare in Australia and the UK, rare in
Holland, Italy and France and surprisingly common, by comparison, in
Germany, Switzerland and Austria.  I say "surprisingly" because at
least half of all Triphonola rolls do not announce the fact but have
labels that merely look like Animatic ones.

The give-away is that the name "Animatic" is succeeded by, or the
number is preceded by, the letter T.  I have had two Triphonola rolls
which came in boxes, and bore labels, for the corresponding ordinary
Animatic roll, without any T.  I suspect these were sold after attempts
to promote Triphonola in the teeth of competition had been abandoned,
say around 1930.

The story I have is that Triphonola was Hupfeld's response to the
green-paper Welte-Mignon, which was a redesign of the original Welte
system to provide full-scale playing both in reproduction and personal
interpretation.  Triphonola did the same for the Hupfeld DEA system and
had the edge over the "green Welte" in that the rolls could be placed
simply on any Solodant or Themodist foot-player anywhere in the world
and be played using those accenting systems, without any doctoring or
covering up of the tracker-bar.

This required all the control tracks to be squashed in between the
theme positions and the edge of the roll, at a pitch of about 12 to
the inch, just where you really want hole positions to be wider spaced
to allow for paper expansion and shrinkage.  As a result T rolls are
all rather fragile and are quickly ruined when tracking is poor.

The Triphonola list was disappointingly thin -- perhaps only a quarter
of the Animatic title range, and most of it severe classical.  In this
list, though, are some supreme performances, at which anyone who owns
Animatics can easily guess.  It seems that T owners were not expected
to be febrile collectors, but distinguished members of society who
would be satisfied with a small cabinet of master works.

The (British) Musical Museum has, or had, a working Triphonola grand.
It would be fun to code some present-day jazz for it !

Dan Wilson

 [ Can anyone send me an image of the special "T-Animatic" label for
 [ MMD Pictures site?  -- Robbie