65 note piano rolls
For me, the most interesting era of the player piano is the very early years, the developmental years before the widespread adoption of the 88-note format. All those weird and wonderful piano-player variants, all the weird and wonderful early 65-note internal player pianos! A lot of these now don't survive though a fair amount still does. Though 65-note player manufacture dropped off sharply by around 1910 some were made new even into the 1920s. I saw a mid-20s Aeolian Weber fitted with a factory-new 65-note stack a few years ago. The piano action was fitted for an 88-note stack but a one-off 65-noter had been custom made for someone. Presumably they had a very large library of 65-note rolls from an older push-up. In the UK 65-note rolls were made right up until 1939 with all the dance titles available on the normal 31,000 and 41,000 series catalogue. In the main years of the 65-note era (say 1895 to 1915) the focus of Aeolian was to program as much music as possible. When the 88-note era arrived transferring all this hard work over to 88-note was not done. The marketplace was less high-brow and only the most popular saleable classics were generally issued as opposed to the previous "try and offer everything" music library approach. It is a fact that there are some really fine and rare pieces lurking away on 65s that you'll never see on 88s. Richard Strauss' "Don Juan" Overture in my last midi e-concert is one such example. I'm curious. How many people have a 65-note player or a 65-88 note player? How many people collect 65-note rolls seriously these days? What are peoples views on 65s?

I'm helping a friend with the finishing touches on his 2 aeolian 65-note push ups.... but he merely got them because he couldn't find an 88-note push-up. I haven't had a close look at his 65-note roll collection yet, so nothing to say so far, the rolls I did try sounded good to me. I believe they were some mendelsohn stuff...

Adam, I have a c. 1907 Autopiano in a cool arts & crafts oak case. I have, maybe, around 80 or so rolls. Most are classical pieces but a few popular tunes also. The piano is still being restored so I haven't played it yet but I am looking forward to it when finished later this year.

I have one 65 note roll which I bought by mistake off eBay......... As I don't have any means of playing 65 note rolls I guess it is destined for the roll auction or back on eBay. Andy

I've got a 65/88n player, but the 65n collection is just curiosities picked up when they appear. There was some superb repertoire in this format, but my experience is that it's rather thinly spread. Only occasionally do rolls appear that don't have that "seen it dozens of times on the postbid" quality. Something I look our for are the London-issued rolls of Latin American classical material from the years up to WW1, some of which is on 65n only. It was often issued very soon after publication, or even before it on one or two occasions, so there must have been some link with a (probably Argentinian) publishing house. Spurred on by this thread I dug through a couple of boxes of 65n rolls that have been sitting in the garage for a while. One real catch for the obscure repertoire buff: "Rajah Suite" by Carter (on Imperial Linenized) - zero hits on Google, not in the British Library or Library of Congress catalogues. Music's not particularly interesting, needless to say! Julian