In connection with the discussion about burning holes in rolls with a
laser (991228 MMDigest), it's worth mentioning that Gordon Iles of the
Artona Music Roll Co in Ramsgate UK (roughly 1951 to 1975) designed and
used a hot-wire editor for correcting his production rolls.

On one occasion, in a fit of enthusiasm, he offered these tools for
sale.  I couldn't resist buying one and remember photographing the kit
when new.  They came in a much nicer box than the Artona rolls did, and
consisted of the wooden-handled burner with a cord, a short length of
roll paper to practise on, a sheet of instructions and nothing else.
You had to provide a 6-volt transformer, some means of adjusting the
voltage, and a quick-action switch, preferably worked by foot.

The tool looked very like a primitive hot-wire wire-stripper, like
this:-  (view in fixed-pitch font)

 __________________
 |                 |----\   more of a pinched V on the end here
 |_________________|----/

The end was quite a small V shape which glowed dully red when you had
everything right.  I managed to get a variable transformer and a foot
switch.

The first thing I discovered was that the learning process involved a
great deal of leaping about the room trying to stamp out short lengths
of flaming roll.  Only great sophistication in control achieved the
desired end, which was to produce a very small neat round hole in the
roll with a delicate jab of the tool.  For some reason (wire erosion at
the tip, probably) the tool gradually got hotter and hotter and needed
continuous adjustment.

Eventually I felt confident enough to do some proper work with it and,
since Southport rolls had just started coming out without any Themodist
"snakebites" on them, where I felt that these would add a lot to their
value, I arranged with the maker Malcolm Robinson to "Themodise" my
copy of his first roll and send it to him, whereupon using my copy he
would make and send me a properly punched one.  To get the theme holes
in just the right place, I used my 88-note pushup which unlike a piano
has the tracker-bar tilted well back, and touched the roll right where
the treble or bass theme port was.  The brass helped to control the
temperature at the edges so none of the holes were oversize.

Malcolm must have liked the effect, because after that he took a lot
more interest in "themeing" rolls and most of his later issues had
snakebites -- and in the right places too.

Looking back on it, the burner was marginally less troublesome than
razor-blading the perforations on a whole roll, but is much too much
bother to set up for the very occasional doctoring of rolls that I do.
I think I would modify it by having the burner on a solenoid controlled
by a second switch that gave a standard delicate jab at the roll.

Dan Wilson, London