This interior tour of the Lösche Jazzband mechanisms begins in the bottom section below the keyboard, the location of the electric motor and the vacuum feeder pump, which generates a partial vacuum that powers the various pneumatically operated player mechanisms. In the mid-section, directly above the keyboard, is the music roll spoolbox and accompanying control chests and multiplexing devices. For the Lösche Jazzband, the roll playing mechanism requires a very sophisticated system of controls because of its ability to play two distinctly different types of music rolls. It can accommodate either the Lösche Jazzband music rolls or the Empeco (piano only) expression music rolls. Behind the complicated roll mechanism is the partially visible piano action with a mandolin attachment. The various trapwork items are housed In the top piano case extension, and consist of the following:

Central to the trapwork section is the bass drum and crash cymbal, which are interconnected in several interesting ways. (In this photograph, the bass drum is swiveled outward to reveal the four bass drum beaters and two pedestal mounted light bulbs that illuminate the bass drum from its backside whenever the Jazzband is operational.) Two of the bass drum beaters play the bass drum from their own tracker bar holes, which are arranged to play it like the tom-tom in a 1920s dance band. Two other tracker bar holes play the two other bass drum beaters, each of which is connected to play with one of the three cymbal beaters, with these two interconnected cymbal beaters having a softer cushion, producing a softer low-pitched, longer-sustained cymbal beat in the background of the music. The third cymbal beater in the middle plays from its own tracker bar hole and has a hard felt cushion, which produces a loud, sharp cymbal crash. Yet another hole in the music roll controls two cymbal damper pneumatics with soft damper cushions, muting the cymbal when a short crash is desired. This musical feature was very popular with dance band drummers from the mid-1920s until the introduction of the hi-hat cymbal in the early 1930s. (If you watch a video of a modern dance band that plays 1920s dance music arrangements, you’ll hear the drummer frequently play a short “splash” on one of the cymbals, and then almost immediately pinch the cymbal between his thumb and fingers for a staccato (short duration) sound. The Lösche Jazzband does an excellent job of duplicating this type of cymbal crash.)

To the right of the bass drum is the snare drum, triangle, and wood block. The Lösche Jazzband snare drum has one reiterating beater. It plays a single tap from a single punch in the music roll, or a reiterating snare drum roll from a slot that is two punches or longer. A pivoting metal rod acts as a rest for the beater wire. In addition to the one beater pneumatic, there are two other pneumatics that push on the rest rod from the front, pushing the beater closer to the drum to make the drum softer. One of these pneumatics responds to soft perforations in the music roll, and the other is controlled by a “drums soft” manual switch in the spoolbox. Below the snare drum is the triangle, which is a single stroke action, but the valve action is fast enough so that that a series of single punches in the roll cause it to reiterate almost as fast as a reiterating mechanism does. The wood block, located behind the triangle, also has a single stroke action.

The Lösche Jazzband music roll mechanism is, as is obvious in the above photograph, a very complicated and interrelated combination of mechanics and pneumatic control chests and multiplexing devices to accommodate two very different music roll types: Lösche Jazzband music rolls and Empeco (piano only) expression music rolls, which are 11¼” wide with a hole spacing of 9 per inch, and a total of 98 holes. There was a trend in Germany for Hupfeld, Lösche, Popper, and probably some others to change from their previous roll scales with larger, more widely-spaced holes to the standardized 9 per inch scale, with smaller mechanisms responding to the smaller tracker bar signals.

Above the roll mechanism and in front of some of the piano tuning pins is the supporting frame for the mandolin attachment, which only the top of the frame is partially visible and it only spans a selected portion of the piano scale. The mandolin attachment is a curtain type fastened to a wooden frame that has guides causing it to slide straight up and down instead of pivoting from side arms as in many other coin pianos and orchestrions.

Each tracker bar hole that has two different functions—one function for Jazzband rolls and another for Empeco rolls—that go to a wooden tee rail behind the tracker bar. This wooden rail contains internal channels that connect each group of three tubes together. Of each group of three, one is tubed from the tracker bar, the second goes to the pouch for its Jazzband function in the appropriate valve chest, and the third goes to the pouch for the Empeco function in its appropriate valve chest. (These include the large valve chest sitting on top of the spoolbox, a smaller chest behind the spoolbox, and various other controls on the pump expression box.)

The lower bass and higher treble tracker bar holes are the ones that have different functions for the two different music roll types. The primary valves for each group of functions associated only with one roll are enclosed in one or more small wooden boxes or chambers that are connected to a controlling secondary valve. If the manual roll selector switch is set on “Jazzband,” it turns on the secondary valve that feeds suction into the boxes surrounding the primary valves for Empeco-only expression functions, causing them to deliver suction to their associated secondary pouches whether the primaries are playing or not, preventing the secondary valves for those Empeco functions from working. The roll selector switch set on “Jazzband” simultaneously turns another secondary valve off, sending atmosphere to the box covering the valves controlling Jazzband percussions and other functions. With atmosphere available to the tops of those primaries, they work as ordinary primaries do, sending atmosphere signals to their associated secondary pouches when they play so the Jazzband secondary valves work. Setting the roll selector switch to the setting for Empeco expression rolls reverses the suction or atmosphere going to the control boxes surrounding the groups of primary valves, allowing the Empeco notes and expression functions to work instead of the Jazzband valves.

What makes the Jazzband music rolls even more intriguing, setting aside the commplicated encoding of system controls, is that there seem to be at least 6 tracks in the rolls for ranks of pipes and xylophone. No example of a larger Lösche Jazzband with any ranks of pipes or a xylophone is known to exist, but should such a specimen have survived it would, no doubt, be a wonderful sounding orchestrion, despite the excessive complexity.

The roll mechanism is actually much more complicated than described here, because there are also other types of multiplexing mechanisms. These include (1) pneumatics that hold certain primary valves down to prevent them from working; (2) trigger pneumatics that open one or more lead tubes to atmosphere; (3) one main expression valve that is turned on and off by two opposing pneumatics from one type of roll, or by an ordinary pouch under its valve stem from the other type of roll; and (4) other mechanisms that are even more complicated. Meanwhile, the midrange tracker bar holes play the same piano notes for both types of rolls, so their tracker bar tubes go directly to their stack pouches without going through the wooden tee rail.