Greetings fellow MMDigest folks!  To follow up on Dave Saul's
glowing report last week about the LX,  I had the pleasure of meeting
Dave Saul and his lovely wife, Anne, at their home in San Diego a few
weeks ago.  I have enjoyed his excellent work over the years with his
Ampico re-cuts ( http://www.precisionmusicrolls.com ).  We spent a
lovely afternoon talking all things player pianos, with not enough time
to cover everything!   We also listened to his wonderful Steinway AR
Duo-Art and Ampico B grand pianos, and I had a tour of his roll cutting
workshop.

A few days later, I met up with Dave and Anne, along with Ralph and
Gloria Shack, at the home of my player piano re-builder, Randy Cox,
where we were treated to several Ampico selections played on his
beautiful 8'2" Kawai concert grand piano from 1982.  However, this Kawai
is not an Ampico -- it has the LX player system from Live Performance,
http://www.live-performance.com/ 

Thanks to Wayne Stahnke, who has graciously shared his Ampico emulator
software with Dave, we were hearing Ampico rolls from Dave's Precision
Music Roll Catalog on the LX.  I was very impressed, as we all were, at
the quality of the playback.  At that time, I did not have my recording
equipment with me.  However, when I arrived home, I wanted to record
these on my 1925 Mason & Hamlin RBB, which has an Ampico system, and
was the very first LX on the market.

Here are the WEB/ANN perforator control files that Dave used to cut his
Ampico rolls, converted into LX files by Dave using Wayne's emulator,
then recorded on my piano with a digital recorder and a pair of high
quality stereo mics.  These audio files are straight from the recorder,
there has been no processing done to these recordings:

1. Ampico Roll # 214691, "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf", "The Three
Little Pigs", Churchill-Ronell, played by Frank Milne 12/1933
http://www.box.com/s/1b663b2328048c366587 

2. Ampico Roll # 70161, "Le Petit Ane Blanc" ("The Little White Donkey")
by Ibert, played by Benno Moiseiwitsch  9/1929
http://www.box.com/s/2a17d5cc172922dd7c5c 

It is such a pleasure to hear these played by the LX with such musicality
and precision.  I think Dr. Hickman and Mr. Stoddard would have approved!

Thank you, Dave, for your excellent work over the years, and for your
continuing work, and allowing these to be heard.  Wayne, thank you for
the LX, and for sharing this technology with the player piano world.
We owe Dave, Wayne, and people like this, a big debt of gratitude, as
we can now preserve this great musical history in a high resolution
format for future generations.

Sincerely,
John Del Carlo