The information below most likely refers to a later-made Ennis system. New information about an earlier system has recently come to light.

Another piano to add to your list: Canada (brand name) piano with an Ennis player. I have it in the shop and it's about 3/4 done. I haven't worked on it for a while because it's mine. It's made in Canada (obviously) but I don't know by whom.

The player itself is nothing special. The tracker system is, though. It's a typical double pneumatic that moves the bar, not the roll. There are five holes on each side of the bar, where the edge of the paper goes over. Only one hole on each side is open at any one time and the paper slides over them and balances, like a Standard action.

If you want to transpose, move the indicator and another pair of holes are opened and the original closes. The tracker is now out of balance so the tracker pneumatic moves accordingly. The bar moves the appropriate distance and the roll transposes over a new set of holes. The idea is elegant but slow in operation because of the stiffness of the tracker bar tubing. BTW, there is a thread on this tracker in MMD.

This piano also has an unusual adjunct to the soft pedal buttons. Imagine a "T" attached between the button and the pneumatic for treble and bass. The tubing attaches to the top of the "T" with the tail open. Now, over the open tail put an arm that is attached to a small, spring loaded pneumatic. The pneumatic is directly tubed to the reservoir. As you pump lightly, the stack plays lightly and, since the T tail is open, the soft pedal pneumatics collapse and push the hammer rail up.

As you increase pedal power, the suction overcomes the spring on the pneumatic, it closes over the T tail and the soft pedal pneumatics relax, the hammer rail moves back and the piano plays with more power. The soft pedal buttons now work also.

This system works as long as everything is working at optimum, but as things begin to leak, the spring that holds the pneumatic open can dominate.

The pneumatic is about the size of a stack pneumatic and the suction to it is from 5/32 tubing. The spring that holds it open is small and is attached to the hinge end with an end hanging over. Tension can be adjusted by a screw through the over hang. I hope you get the picture. If you're still curious, I can send you photos.

The above information was provided by Jeff Davis who also wrote an article about the Ennis system for the Mechanical Music Digest, click here.

Thanks to Levi Werner, new information has come to light about the Ennis system. Levi's piano was made in 1915. It appears that Ennis made an earlier system with a manually-controlled transposing trackerbar. The image below shows the lever that's used to move the trackerbar left or right.

It also appears that the manner in which the system controlled the Bass and Treble Soft devices was different. It has two small wooden blocks (one for Bass and one for Treble) that are tubed as shown in the graphic below.

Click on image to see greater detail.

Below is a picture of the block as seen from the front and the right side. #1 points to the fitting that is tubed to the elbow in front of the reservoir and #2 points to the fitting that is tubed to the push button. #3 cannot be seen in the pictures but it is tubed to the hammer rail lift bellow.

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