It’s a sad time for those of you who appreciate the high-tech of yesteryear. QRS has decided to stop manufacturing player piano rolls. It’s actually amazing that they were still making them up until early 2009. Luckily for us there will always be plenty available on ebay.
The halt in production comes 108 years after the company was founded in Chicago, and 42 years since it moved to Buffalo. Rolls used in player pianos reached their peak in popularity in the early 20th century, when a roll of paper was able to reproduce music through perforations signifying notes played on the piano.
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I’m waiting for somebody to modify a wide carriage “dot” matrix printer that will punch out piano rolls from midi files.
Having lived in Buffalo for most of my life the QRS company was well known to my family. Sad to hear they stopping the old punched roll as we called them. The player piano was one of the first thing my dad had to stop me from taking apart.
Finding this story reminded me of how much I love player pianos. I am picking up a few rolls so I can experiment making my own “player piano”, although mine will not involve a piano…but it will make some noise!