James & Holmstrom Transposer # NA
We have two versions of
these pianos in the collection. One by James &
Holmstrom of New York and one by Norris & Hyde of Boston. Transposers made it
possible for the piano player to change the key of a musical piece by the
simple maneuver of moving the keys of the piano underneath the action. This
made life much simpler should it be necessary to change key, than re-learning
the entire piece. If the singer said "It’s too high for me to sing!" the
piano player could just crank the piano down a bit.
This piano has a wheel that one turns to accomplish the change and a range of
+ or - three half steps. The Norris & Hyde has a full octave range. In either
piano there are extra keys built into the piano to make up for notes lost at
the ends of the keyboard when the shift takes place. The Norris has 100 keys
so that there are always 88 available no matter how much of a shift is called
for. The extra keys slide underneath the key blocks.