Larry Broadmoore has gone on this open forum and asked for financial
help.  I think we should be willing to consider it.

The only reason we have the things that are available to us these days
in this hobby like reproducing piano new and recut rolls, e-rolls, and
places to take an instrument for restoration is through the efforts of
lone individuals or husband and wife teams that have a passion for
player pianos and have taking on providing these things usually with
little hope of any profit to amount to anything.  Larry is one of these
individuals who has had a run of bad luck.

Why support PowerRoll?  Something that does what the PowerRoll does is
needed in the hobby.  The technology is here for others to do it, but
they haven't, and the PowerRoll is a reality.  I've seen the PowerRoll
demonstrated at two AMICA Conventions: Boston and, I think, Niagara
Falls.  It's well made, not a piece of plastic junk, and it works.
I've always believed Larry was determined to build a quality product,
but have known for quite awhile that he was having financial troubles.

I'd just as soon stick around and wait to finally get my PowerRoll
than probably wait a lot longer for something else to come along that
I might think a great deal less of and may require alteration of the
player mechanism to use.

Yes, I've had one on order for quite a while.  If Larry doesn't get
some financial relief it could become too difficult to continue
producing the product.  A man can only bang his head against a wall
for so long before he has to stop.

Just the existence of the PowerRoll has been a factor in spurring
the production on e-rolls.  If things continue as they are now, when
substantial portions of the Ampico, Duo-Art, and hopefully Welte
libraries are starting to be available on e-rolls, we may dare to
believe that nearly the entire catalogs could become available.  This
means available to those that sell and perforate recut paper rolls,
to people that have computer driven solenoid MIDI pianos like the
Disklavier, and, if there's PowerRoll or something like it, to the
folks that have Ampico, Duo-Art, and Welte players.

It'd be too bad if the folks that had the pianos the rolls were made
for were left out.  Don't forget, at least at the time I'm writing
this, we're now wondering what happened to Keystone.  Don't forget
the Malones are in their 80's.

Maybe a rich collector may decide to back PowerRoll, maybe they won't.
What can the rest of us do?

I suggest that a few hundred of us agree to kick in and donate a
hundred or so dollars to Larry.  It may be a great help; Larry could
tell us if it wouldn't be.  I'd be willing to do that.  A hundred
dollars is about the price of a medium size order of recuts; much less
than a lot of things we, as individuals, do in our Hobby.  I'd suggest
that someone, maybe MMD, accumulate pledges to do so, and if it amounts
to enough to do any good, we could go ahead and do it.

I expect there'll be big-time nay-sayers and detractors to this idea,
but these people usually aren't associated with projects that succeed.
They will also rightly tell you that they aren't suckered into anything
either.  I don't believed we'd be throwing that money down the dumper,
but we'd probably survive if that's what it was.  I'm more concerned
that we in the hobby need to lend some assistance now if we expect
PowerRoll to survive.

Regards,

Dick Merchant
Carlsbad, NM

 [ The major assets are the tooling that Larry developed and the
 [ patents he secured.  A private investor group could be formed to
 [ purchase shares of these assets and so provide Larry with fresh
 [ operating capital.  -- Robbie