A reproducing piano is basically a pneumatically operated player piano which not only plays the notes by itself, but reproduces the exact soft or loud nuances, as well as pedal technique that the original roll artist put into the roll recording. The reproducing piano reproduces the exact performance of the artist who made the roll. The end result is the same as some great artist, such as Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Hoffman or Gershwin, sitting at the piano and playing for you. Any of the standard reproducing piano brands, if restored correctly and regulated correctly, will sound exactly like a concert performance by the person who made the roll originally.
All the world's greatest concert pianists left recordings of their performances between 1904 and 1941 when production was discontinued. Many of the finest jazz, ragtime, and popular pianists of the day also made recordings as well. Some pianists can only be heard on one brand of reproducing roll while some played for more than one. After 1932 when the two main American manufacturing companies merged, some artists' rolls were converted to be available on both of those brands of roll.
Since the late 1970's there has been a resurgence of interest in these pianos, their rolls and their artists. There are new solenoid operated piano playing systems which use computer systems and storage media such as cassette tape, floppy disk, Compact disk, compact flash, VHS tape, hard disk drive and any other usable storage media.
Main brands:
The first reproducing piano to appear on the market was made in Germany by M. Welte & Sons who was known for making large automatic orchestrions found in dance halls and large beer gardens. They played organ pipes and percussion instruments to imitate the orchestra or dance band. They introduced the Welte-Mignon system or Little Welte around 1904 which played piano alone with all the expression of the artist. By 1911-12 American companies came out with their versons of reproducing pianos. Aeolian Company rolled out the Duo-Art system available in the piano brands that they built or controlled and the American Piano Company (Ampico) came out with the Ampico system found in the piano brands that they conrolled. (AM'-pih-coe is most common pronunciation with a few people saying am-PEA-co). There were a few less common systems like the one from Germany called Hupfeld Dea, as well as the American made ArtEcho (aka Apollo).
There were some player systems that were not a complete reproducing player system and those are often called expression pianos. These sold to the middle price range market–the folks who could not afford the expensive reproducing piano, but wanted something more musical than the standard 88-note player piano. The main one of these expression piano systems was called Recordo. While they were capable of some very nice renditions of expressive music they are generally not considered as expressive as a full fledged Reproducing player system.
Expression:
Experssion was accomplished by extra holes at the far right and left edges of the roll. These most often included a hole for the sustaining pedal and a hole for the soft pedal as well as holes to control the volume for bass and treble sides of the keyboard. The notes at which bass divided from treble varied between the various systems.
The original German Welte system used a constantly changing crescendo system that only had three set volume levels, softest, loudest and MezzoForte. All other volume levels were from the mechanical system sliding between those set levels. It has a fast and slow crescendo and decrescendo. Welte had separate units controlling treble and bass volumes independently. They also used one short hole to turn something on and a second short hole to turn the same thing off. This is called lock and cancel in pneumatic jargon. This means there were no long extended length holes along the paper edges which are more easily damaged on rolls.
The AEolian Corporation's Duo Art system used a fully digial system of two divisions which could control volume in either bass or treble end of the keyboard as controlled by the roll. This was comprised of an Accompaniment volume level which used 4 settings (labeled 1,2,4,&8) that could combine to make 16 different volume levels as well as a Theme or Solo division which used a second 4 settings that could combine to make 16 levels of volume for the theme notes. The 4 holes for accompaniment are on the bass end of the roll and the 4 holes for theme are at the treble end of the roll. The whole keyboard normally was under conrol by the accompaniment division. A pair of smaller holes (called snakebites) in the roll aligning with a melody note in either bass or treble side of the keyboard would kick that side into being controlled by the Theme volume level. This switch occurred so fast that one note in a chord could be singled out to be louder than the rest of the notes in that chord.
The American Piano Company's Ampico system used two identical control units that combined three set volumes that combine with each other for 8 levels along with a continuously changing crescendo system that constantly moved those set volumes onto the top of the constantly changing crescendo volume level. It has a fast and slow crescendo and decrescendo speed.
Modern update
There are people working with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) who are working to more easily convert modern recordings made on digital keyboards to being able to cut rolls that will play on the pneumatic reproducing piano systems.
Rolls for all the reproducing piano systems are sometimes in bad condition. Roll paper has a limited lifespan. Some rolls are still playable after over 100 years. Some brands of 88-note roll have few surviving examples because the paper was too acid and has now turned to powder. Most of the reproducing rolls were made on higher quality paper but they too will soon deteriorate to unplayable condition. Recuts of the most popular rolls have been made for 40 years now, so originals and recuts are available on ebay at garage or estate sales, etc. While the most popular tunes usually had thousands of copies made and are readily available, there are some rolls that are more uncommon and rarely seen.
In order to save the piano roll performances from extinction, people in the player piano community are busy building scanners and scanning their piano rolls into MIDI file format which can be used to cut new copies of the original rolls or control the player system by use of a solenoid interface to open the tracker bar holes instead of a roll. These systems are now commercially available and are tested and functioning well. MIDI format piano rolls will also readily play on the newer solenoid operated piano playing systems.