Regarding Sid Kramer's inquiry about 46-key B.A.B. rolls [120214
MMDigest], based on the roll numbers, these rolls were made in
Bloomington, Minnesota, by Tom Wurdeman, using the original B.A.B.
masters on their Acme perforator, which Tom's father, Ozwald "Ozzie"
Wurdeman had custody of from the Bovey collection.

Senator Bovey purchased the remains of the B.A.B. company back in 1958
and moved everything to his restored mining town, Nevada City, Montana.
[ See the history at http://www.virginiacitymt.com/Nevada.asp ]

The Acme perforator and many B.A.B. organ roll masters were dropped off
in Minneapolis at the Wurdeman residence.  (The Wurdemans worked with
Bovey each summer, and a "Wurdeman Music Building" was part of the
Bovey museum complex.)

Ozzie, then later Tom, proceeded to perforate rolls for the instruments
using the B.A.B., North Tonawanda Musical Instrument Works, and Artizan
Factories' hole spacing, mostly in 46- and 48-key, but also in the
larger scales.  (Tom Wurdeman has since sold the perforator and rolls
which now sit in storage unused and unavailable.)

Many European book organs were converted by Ozzie Wurdeman to play the
B.A.B. rolls, as an ample supply of music masters were available for him
to make up new rolls.  New book music was expensive while the B.A.B.
music masters provided a plethora of popular tunes from across the
B.A.B. era, which ended in 1957.  B.A.B.'s 46-key roll No. 2 was
produced in 1928.  B.A.B. roll No. 12, from 1938, was ten tunes and
included "Round-up Time in Reno" and Disney's "Whistle While You Work."
The last 46-key roll punched was Roll No. 35 from 1957 that included
tunes such as "You Can Fly" from the Disney film "Peter Pan," and the
then-popular and new tunes "Green Door" and "Marianne."

My research has shown that there were at least 267 46-key masters made.
Each roll produced did not necessarily have 10 tunes on it.  1944's
roll No. 21 had only 8 tunes, and 1951's roll No. 28 had 10 (as did the
previously mentioned last roll, No. 35).

It is interesting to note that the B.A.B. masters are not in one
collection, but in two.  Ozzie Wurdeman kept only the masters of tunes
he recognized (175 tunes in 46-key, one of which was severely damaged),
sending the remainder of the masters (at least 92 masters in 46-key
format) to the Bovey complex in Montana, where they remain today,
according to noted restorer Art Reblitz.

Of the rolls Mr. Kramer has, I can shed a little more light on a few
as they were custom-cut for the 46-key band organ I co-own with Mike
Merrick.  (The organ is a Ruth barrel instrument converted by Artizan
to play paper rolls using a North Tonawanda Musical Instrument Works
vacuum system.  Ozzie Wurdeman removed the endless roll frame but never
installed the replacement spooling frame -- a task Mike and I completed
shortly after acquiring the organ from Tom Wurdeman in 1980.)

Roll No. 541 was ordered by us from Tom Wurdeman on November 3, 1982,
and delivered by him on December 10, 1982.  Rolls No. 544 (war tunes)
and No. 549 were custom cut and delivered November 11, 1983.  Rolls
No. 568 and 570 were custom-made for us as well, rounding out the
available masters giving us the largest collection of B.A.B. music
possible.

We assisted Tom in transposing 48-key music masters to 46-key
configuration in order for him to provide a five-tune roll of Christmas
music for a client in Texas (there were no 46-key Christmas masters in
the Wurdeman collection).  The "new" roll was tested on our Ruth-Artizan
organ and found to have a slight problem (which was in the master).
With our editing of the master, the re-re-cut transposed Christmas roll
sounded great!

The Wurdeman collection had 87 48-key masters that did not have a
46-key counterpart, so we made plans to have Tom re-tube and "Y" the
Acme perforator once again to make up _nine_ new 46-key rolls of
previously unavailable music.  Unfortunately, the perforator itself
needed restoration work by this time, and Tom never got around to doing
the restoration.  He sold the machine as-is with all the masters, and,
as mentioned, it now sits dormant.

Roll No. 481 was a custom-cut roll Tom had done for a previous customer.
Roll 315 may have been done by Tom's father, Ozzie.  The roll numbers
may seem to have wide gaps between editions, but Tom Wurdeman explained
this as follows: He was cutting rolls for all of the compatible scales,
46, 48, 61, 65 and 87 keys, plus rolls for harp and Pianolin, which all
used the eight-holes-to-the-inch spacing.  Therefore, the roll currently
being punched was simply given the next number in the sequence of its
production.  Tom said today (February 15, 2012) that he punched "a lot"
of rolls over the years.

The Acme perforator was capable of making at least 12 copies of the
roll at once, but Tom preferred to do 6 or 7 as doing more copies often
resulted in the paper slipping and the punchings not being very crisp.
Many of the additional rolls had to be rejected.  Tom wrote the
position of the roll in the punching process on the back side of the
roll behind the tab.  The roll from the top of the layer of paper was
number 1 and was reserved for whoever ordered the roll.  The bottom
layer roll was copy number 6 or 7.

Tom Wurdeman was selling his recut rolls for $30 each, but if you
ordered a custom roll, the price was $40.  This was to provide him with
an extra fee for having to pull the masters from their original roll
repository (usually a brown paper grocery bag with the original roll
number and scale size written on it), and then having to return the
master to its original position after custom-cutting.

A final recollection: Mike and I watched the Acme punch in operation
on more than one occasion, and it was something to behold.  A plastic
five-quart ice cream bucket acted as the receptacle for the paper chads
that the punch spewed while in operation.  Upon my marriage to my
darling wife, Merrie, on November 2, 1985, we were showered with the
band organ roll punchings instead of rice.  Believe me, they got
everywhere!

Tracy M. Tolzmann