Mignonites and any others having interest -- Among the divided
ever-fussing Mignonite Coterie, as far as I am aware, none of either
are aware that the first German Welte-Mignon instruments in combination
with their T-100 record-rolls, featured dual-speed pedaling effects!

Some fifty-or-so years ago it was that I first examined a valve-block
come originally from a very early T-100 German manufactured instrument,
this compliments of it's loan by technician/restorer Iver Becklund,
then of Bellflower, California. In pencil I drew-out completely and
dimensioned it accurately. I possess it still.

With regard now to the "Sfz. F" sustain pedal lock valve there, I found
it curious and baffling that the air inlet going to it was channeled
specially as leading to a small well of about 1/2" diameter, placed
directly to it's right side. Within was found placed a thick felt
punching featuring a teeny-tiny hole punched at it's middle. Also to
be observed was much evidence of pricking and picking there. At the
time I'd no idea (just as I did not regarding much else of then) as to
what it might have meant or, been for.

Most all of the thousands of T-100 rolls that have come into my hands
over these many years, I have examined with prying, seeking-eye. By one
item as-noticed was that, peculiar to the very early hand-punched ones
found mostly on lined dark-orange papers, the sustain pedal-off ("Sfz.
P.") valve duct punchings rather often displayed only single-holes.

Naturally I thought this only error or sloppy punching practice but,
later, as remembering back to the found-valve situation of earlier, I
pondered as to what might have been the effect of so many single-holed
cancels, on any resulting behavior? Further amateur cogitation, upon
the little matter of mystery, did finally reveal it's lurking truth.

On those earliest German-built Mignon instruments, the sustain pedaling
pneumatics had their interior's re-flushed with air by two distinct
means: one being a separate pallet opening-and-closing to atmosphere
found attached directly to them and the other, by air flowing back-in
over the top of the evacuation/lock valve -- the one with the attending,
odd pricked felt well?

All of this, then, as taken in-toto, reveals the heretofore hidden
truth concerning our subject.  It is that, one single cancel hole
causes to occur two distinct actions: the first displacing the
pneumatic pallet upward for just a split-second and canceling the lock
valve, these then resulting in a quick partial-downward movement of the
pneumatic and thus, so-to the dampers it lifts and lowers, the _rest_
of the way they settling-down upon the strings -- according precisely
with the rate of air allowed to bleed slowwwly back into the sustain
pneumatic as regulated by the well of pricked-felt.

_Ergo!_ Two descending and meeting possible velocities; one being fast
and the other fast 'till just arrived above the strings and then ...
the damper's positive deceleration with resultant slow meeting with
the strings!

Almost half-a-century ago, now, while living in West Los Angeles, a
well-known fellow Welte-Mignon collector visited me, he coming from
Germany. I was honored by his presence and the fact that he took such
time to and the trouble visit my admittedly meager collecting self
of-then.

The day was spent enjoyably. As part of it, also we two journeyed to
Encino, visiting and auditioning (if I might recall here correctly)
the Tushinsky Tri-Plex Vorsetzer I had made and as well too, Kenneth K.
Caswell's Steinway Welte-Mignon "B," this instrument being at that time
owned by another Tushinsky brother. (In-all there were four, but now
only one.)

At some point while in conversation, for a moment I broached subtly
this very present subject, trying to get a 'feel' as to whether or
not he was at all conversant with the matter.

Equally subtly he indicated (so I believed then and do-still) that he
was or might-have-been, though any further elaboration upon this was
not to be had. ('Coy' seeming to have been the itself-thing, possibly.)
And there it was left until this very moment of my writing about it.

"The saga-enigmatic buried _silent_ for o'er half-a-century!"

So. All that as said and it for ever-and-all-time now ("The Internet
never forgets!"), what might it all mean past and above the mere
utilitarian?

At very least provisionally along with much-else, it implies that Edwin
Welte and Karl Bockisch were very forward-thinking, and, proceeding in
their mission from the very outset, in a most idealistic way. This plus
the sweet fact that now, any that are any longer lucky enough to actual
own Mignon instruments and, possessing of early hand-punched un-sampled
T-100 record-rolls, can look for that which was previously unknown to
implement knowingly -- namely, actual dual-speed pedaling expression!

Jim Miller
Las Vegas, Nevada