Dear Doctor, can ragtime harm leather gaskets?
No, playing ragtime piano rolls can’t harm leather gaskets. Stride piano, however, has been suspected as a cause of corrosion in pot metal castings and companies whose players had pot metal castings never issued stride pianorolls for this reason one suspects i.e. Farrand Cecilian, Higel etc. Of course in the early years it was perceived that ragtime and jazz were the music of the devil and it was a constant concern that hot music might spill from the spool box and harm small children who were pedalling pianolas with their hands. To overcome these safety concerns the pedal trapdoor was made to slide horizontally instead of the ones that clip up and spool boxes were fitted with an additional glass sliding door. And all this thanks to ragtime! Ah well, you know the old saying – “The devil has all the best tunes”!
