Hello to all, It's good to have you back again.  I have, at certain
times, had the following: a Hammond upright (made by the Straube Piano
Co.) with a Standard action; an Ampico with what I call a transition
drawer (it had ears on each side of the roll and moved the tracker bar
itself); a Gulbransen upright with ear on the left side only (it had a
transposing tracker bar which I was always having to adjust for perfect
tracking for most rolls -- now I know why); and lastly, a Fotoplayer
with double holes on each side of tracker bar.

The Standard system worked great as long as roll had both edges intact
or any voids did not last too long.  The Ampico never gave any trouble
that I can remember.

The Gulbransen had the famous "fishing pole" tracking mechanism and had
the ear only on the left side. It seemed to work fine also; it had a
slight delay for adjusting the roll, which was fine.  When the roll
went over to the right side, the string wound up pulling it to the
left, and when the roll went to the left the string unwound.  It had
to be kept clean and the fishing pole had to be free to go up and down
freely for it to work.  It did tend to over-compensate and make the
roll buckle, at times, and I did have to adjust the tracker bar at the
beginning of some rolls; that was because some rolls were just not
aligned properly.

Now the Fotoplayer has the Autopiano system which has two holes on each
side of the tracker bar and it works great.  (You have to clean out the
sieves in the valve box every so often or it won't work.)  I had a
couple of QRS rolls and some old Mel-O-Dee rolls that aren't aligned
and have just had to get rid of them or replace them as there is no
way to adjust for that problem (the tracker bars are not transposing),
but it tracks without a hitch.  Again, the rolls have to be in good
condition to play -- a little edge softness is okay but if there are
large voids in one edge or the other, forget it.

In short, I have had good luck with all systems with proper maintenance
and rolls in good shape.

Regards, Jerry F. Bacon
Dallas, TX

 [ The comparative performance of music roll tracking systems
 [ should really be evaluated when playing old rolls in poor condition.
 [ One of my best "tracking test" rolls (an Ampico roll) wanders
 [ continuously, like a river meandering through a flood plain !
 [  -- Robbie