Hi all,  Here's a new twist (pardon the pun) on the thread of old rolls
tearing on rewind.  A while back I came across a player grand piano
with the spool box above the keys that was notorious for tearing
original rolls in rewind as well as in the play position.  The
particular manufacturer was noted for poor quality paper in their rolls
and that was usually given as the cause of the roll tearing blues.

With this specific piano, though, I noted a couple of other oddities
with new and old paper passing over the tracker bar.  The first oddity
was that the paper coming off of the supply spool had a slight bubble
on the left side of the paper going to the tracker bar, whereas the
paper coming off the supply spool on the right side was flat going to
the tracker bar.  The other hint was that the left side of the tracker
bar was much dirtier than the right side, which was nice and shiny.

I asked a cousin of mine who was a retired Ford engineer to come
over with his micrometer and other measuring tools to check on some
distances.  We found, after extensive measuring, that the supply spool
ends, take-up spool ends and tracker bar ends were _not_ in perfect
alignment.  Some measurements were 20 to 30 thousandths off.  The
factory must have had some new employees working in the spoolbox line
when this one was assembled.

I have been able to make some adjustments and the performance has
improved.  But it is not perfect... yet!  You may wish to check your
own spoolboxes for abnormalities such as these.

Best wishes,
Mike Walter