Back in 1982, someone at Custom Music Rolls in Richardson, Texas,
hatched the idea of reading Welte T-100 "Red" rolls and converting them
into a form that could be played on a Welte Licensee system.  No doubt
Ken Caswell was in on it as he loaned all of the original Red Welte
rolls for what has been known since as "The Welte Project".

The effort was not an easy one given the properties of the T-100 roll,
not the least of which is its width.  A tracker bar had to be obtained,
and John McClelland came up with one.  Richard Tonnesen, not without
a lot of time and effort, installed that tracker bar on his reader and
made the other necessary adjustments to handle the wider roll.  Just
the thought of transferring 100 tracker bar tubes is enough to make me
nervous.
 
In all, 30 original T-100 rolls were read.  Then Richard wrote a
software program to map the perforations to the standard 100-hole
tracker bar of the Licensee system.  Both systems, unlike the T-98
"Green" Welte rolls, use the lock and cancel system.

Janet Tonnesen, who never throws anything away concerning Custom Music
Rolls and who I swear has all of her school report cards going back to
first grade (she denies it) could not remember just how many rolls were
produced.  Neither can Ken Caswell with whom I talked.  Needless to
say, the production was limited.

I have all of those original files and a spread sheet showing the roll
numbers, selection, title, composer, artist and the length of the roll.
I have made it into a very rough PDF file and placed that file on my
web site.  Thanks should go here to John Tuttle who wrote the HTML
coding for me as I did not understand how to do so.

Most of the Welte rolls were originally recorded in 1910 (there are
exceptions, Landoowska being one) and include some of the great lions
and lionesses of the keyboard.  To my knowledge, none of the performances
were ever issued in anything but the T-100 format, but a quick look at
the Welte rollography will tell you if I am wrong on this question.
I am very far from being an expert on things Welte.

Go to my web site, listed below, and peruse the titles.  If there is
enough interest, meaning at least five people want a particular roll,
I will punch them and offer them for sale.  I have already done five
sets of the three rolls played by Alfred Reisenauer (Google him) but
I am waiting for Tim Baxter to give me information as to just what type
of label I should affix as no one seems to know.

Here is an opinion, and everyone has one.  I have listened to all 30
rolls as played in my simulator in Richard Brandle's "Wind" program.
I find the expression a bit more "subtle," for want of a better word,
than the Licensee rolls.  Yes, there are still those crashing chords
which caused the original direct current motors to speed up, but
overall, they sound great to me.  Maybe the German editors knew
something the American editors did not.  Who knows?

Historic preservation of punched paper music rolls is my goal, and
for you, astute readers, to give the opportunity to issue these rolls
once again, gives me a great amount of satisfaction.

One more thing.  A number of the rolls exceed 100 feet in length.
That places them out of the space I have on a medium flange.  While
I do have special Welte flanges, they require a larger box and I am
not willing to order special boxes for this project.  I will punch
the over-100-foot-long rolls, but you will have to find the box to
place them in.

My web site address is:  http://www.egaida.com/ 

You cannot miss the link as it is the first thing you will see listed.

Ed Gaida - Preserving music by punching holes in paper.
San Antonio, Texas