Hi all,  Well here is my two cents worth.  As a piano roll producer of
"Roller Tunes," I think I have a pretty good handle on supplying recut
rolls.

Currently the world population is over 65 billion people -- that must
be a great source of people wanting player piano rolls?  Well, not
quite.  There are probably somewhere around two million player pianos
out there; even two million customers buying player piano rolls would
be great also, not as great as 65 billion customers, but unfortunately
this is not the case either.

There are about 2,000 dedicated people who belong to such organizations
as AMICA, ATOS, Australian Collectors of Mechanical Music, Dutch
Pianola Assoc., Pianola Institute, MBSI, MMD, Northwest Player Piano
Group, Reed Organ Society, etc., etc., etc.  Well, with all these great
groups of collectors shouldn't there be at least a thousand people who
want piano rolls?  Well, sadly that's not the case either.  I would be
delighted -- ecstatic, and thrilled to death -- if a thousand people
bought a copy of each roll that I produce.  But that is not the case
either...

I decided when I made my first recut roll, "Medley of Songs from
Current Broadway Successes", that I would have to produce and sell
a minimum of 20 copies of the roll, just to recover the costs of
production and break even.  It turns out that I did sell 54 copies and
there is only one copy left!  This was my best selling roll.  I cannot
complain about this one, but it is not making me rich by any means.

There is a lot of work involved.  The roll has to be sent to someone to
punch it, unless you own your own perforator.  You have to wait until
the roll can be worked in among other people wanting rolls recut, you
have to design roll labels, paste them on boxes.  Each one of my roll
box labels is carefully thought out to associate it with the song
title.

I go as far as even printing the leaders with a facsimile of what the
original roll looked like with the tempo, roll label, and even the
signature of the roll artist.  It takes a lot of time and effort.
I even either print a tune sheet or provide a sheet of music with the
roll.  Some of my customers would like the words printed on the rolls
just as they were back in the old days or as QRS still does.  With
the computer equipment and printers I have it is not practical for
a production run of 20 rolls.  I would love the words on them as well.

On the Albert W. Ketelbey roll, "Tangled Tunes", I figured that I would
need to sell at least 29 copies and I did.  I had spent years trying to
identify the 107 tunes on the roll and never did find a copy of the
music, and could only find about a paragraph on the life of Albert
Ketelbey in the music library.  I thought it was very sad that a great
composer as Albert had such a minimal amount written about his life
when he was still living up until 1959.  With the help of other friends
around the world, I was able to put together a 4-page booklet, with
several paragraphs, to go with the roll that gave more description
of Albert's life than any other source available.  After the roll was
produced another collector friend supplied me with a copy of the sheet
music.  I am delighted.

With each succeeding roll production of 20 copies, I found that on the
average I only sold about 10 copies.  This does not put me in the black
and I have stock collecting dust.

Bob Billings says, "we are retired or don't need the money and provide
our services mainly as a hobby.  No way could we make a living selling
the few copies we do at the prices people will pay.  It would be a
different matter if we could sell hundreds or thousands of a single
title, as was done in the '20s."

The point is, I produce recut rolls not for the profit, which is
non-existent, but to get out some great rolls into collectors hands
that should be enjoyed by all.  But it would be nice to sell a complete
production run and come out in the black.

Initially, when I started doing some recut rolls, I felt that the
ragtime and blues rolls had been well done, and I wanted to recut
some great classical, overture, medley and other interesting but long
neglected great rolls of music.  Sadly to say, I cannot find 20 people
out there of the 65 billion people in the world to reproduce those
great titles.  Except for the Ketelbey roll, most of what I do recut
relates to the blues and ragtime selections.  I think most have been
redone by others and that is probably why they don't sell that well.

I have some fantastic rolls in my collection, and have been offered
rolls from other collectors to recut, but most I have not done as
I don't think I can get a minimum of 20 collectors to purchase the
production run.  I have some terrific Duo-Art rolls I would love to
put out but most of the production perforators that are available do
not do the "snake bite" or Theme holes to my satisfaction.  If you
look closely at Themodist or Duo-Art rolls, the Theme holes vary in
size from very small to large, and in some cases the Theme holes may
continuously extend several inches in length.  I think there is a good
reason that the Aeolian Company did that and I want my recuts to be
like the originals.

I would like to ask people's feelings as to what they think of my
selections, either pro or con.  Why they are not interested in buying?
Is the price to high?  Wrong titles?  Or what?

You may visit my web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~rollertunes
Please provide me some feedback.  When you access my site, you want to
go to the Roller Tune recut section, and there you will find the titles
of the rolls that I have done as well as a short snippet of the music.
Let me know what you think? Thanks!

Musically,
Larry Norman, from the Hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
Producer of Roller Tune Player Piano Rolls