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March 29 Never leave a glass of wine on nightstand next to laptop.Since our last episode, a rare unissued Levitzki Ampico notesheet has been scanned, perforator components were tested, more perforator components were ordered, leather for Chickering restoration arrived and mass extermination of poison ivy was carried out.
On May 24, 1926, Mischa Levitzki returned to the Ampico recording piano and recorded the 2nd. movement of Beethoven's Waldstein sonata Op. 53. The notesheet seen in the accompanying photos is the actual original master made on the line marker in the Ampico recording studio nearly 83 years ago. You can clearly see every perforation is hand-punched. There are 3 punches at the start of every note and a single punch at the end. A pencil mark connects these perforations on sustained notes. The numbers written next to the start of every note are probably the intensity values and might be proof the spark chronograph was in use at this early date. Some lighter vertical pencil marks show the locations of the expression tracks and the stack division. There are some horizontal lines from beginning to end with numbers written in on the treble side which might correspond to measure or beat numbers. The very first chord is numbered '1'. There are areas where evenly spaced horizontal lines are drawn in and areas of notes are encircled with a comment to even them up. There are many thousands of small yellow and white bits of paper pasted over note holes. Many have been punched through. This lends credence to the stories of many of the classical performances needing a month or more of editing. There may have been a second go-round of editing which could explain why two colors of editing tape were used. The note sheet would have to be run on the (now nonexistent) stencil machine in order to create a playable roll. It's interesting to note, the editors had little control over which exact punch row an event would fall into. The automated stencil machine had to make that decision. Perhaps the many bits of paper tape were an attempt by the editors (Miss Volavy in this case) to move an event to a different punch row. I don't know of any surviving trial rolls of this performance and we will have to manually insert all of the chaining into the Scanimage MIDI file. Won't it be interesting to hear how polished this performance was? The photos show entire sections of paper having been spliced in. Could this be be some of Miss Volavys 'assisting'?
By the time I arrive at Keystone April 4th. to install the stepper advance unit, I will know just how effective my protective clothing was for preventing contact with the many poison ivy vines which were cut down yesterday. My face was covered with Ivy Block lotion and a face shield. There was no other exposed skin and all gloves and protective clothing were put into the trash. No tools were handled after the gloves came off. I devised this experimental way of killing the roots by wrapping the ends of the vines with a paper towel and dipping it into herbicide. The ends were then encapsulated with urethane foam. This will contain the poison and prevent it from being washed away by rain. It also keeps the poison from killing the host Arbor Vitae bushes. Time will tell whether this method is effective.
The Z-tronics organ rank driver board set has been bench tested successfully and a second set of stepper drive components has been ordered for the late Aeolian perforator.
One night while in dreamland, I thrashed around enough to knock half a glass of wine off my nightstand and onto the keyboard of the new Toshiba laptop computer. The wine poured through the computer and out the CD ROM slot into a pool on the floor. A bath towel came to the immediate rescue but did little to improve the condition of the computer. I avoided powering it up and proceeded to disassemble the entire laptop the next morning. Luckily, only a few drops made it into the hard drive and CD ROM and did not touch the motherboard at all! The worst case scenario was avoided and only the keyboard would need replacing. I decided to try my luck disassembling the keyboard. There were enough eyelashes in there to reconstruct Marilyn Monroe! The trick will be in discovering how to unsnap the keytops from the tiny scissor hinges without breaking anything. There are a few decorative divider strips which must be broken off before the sheet of flexible rubber buttons can be lifted off the circuit board membrane. There are no active ICs in the keyboard assembly except a few LEDs and all switch contacts are hermetically sealed within the membrane. After washing and drying all parts, the keyboard was carefully reassembled and the laptop has been working reliably for more than a week. March 08 Ampico stepper drive system finishedFor the past three hours, I have been exercising the newly completed stepper drive system for Keystone's original Ampico Taft Pierce perforating machines. The last week was spent designing, fabricating, assembling, wiring and programming the new device. See accompanying photos. It will now be possible to perforate piano rolls with virtually any punch row spacing. The immediate goal is to be able to punch Ampico rolls made during the 'merger' period when the rolls were manufactured on Aeolian perforators with .030" punch row spacing. Instead of physically changing gear ratios, it will now be possible to select the desired punch row spacing with a simple thumbwheel switch. The number of microsteps per punch row has been calculated using an Excel spreadsheet designed by the author. This spreadsheet contains equations which model the physical characteristics of the perforator mechanism along with the gear reduction ratio of the drive motor. All cells enclosed in heavy borders are the input parameters. The most important calculated result is the number of microsteps per punch row which is programmed into the motion controller and selected by the thumbwheel switch. The rest is a matter of calculating the proper acceleration and deceleration rates which will produce smooth indexing movements without any undesirable harmonics.
One crescendo pneumatic has been restored and a few progress photos are included. I plan to make another visit to Keystone in a few weeks to install the new motion controller and will check on the progress of the Chickering piano restoration at the John Zeiner & Sons shop during that trip.
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