I would like to second the comments by S. K. Goodman in regard to adding
more instruments to original machines.  And I would go a step further, in
that I would hope that no rebuilder or collector would ever utilize
original components in a build-up.

If you are considering building an orchestrion, which many are beginning
on right now, your efforts will be diluted by scavenging, and your
instrument will be seriously limited in its performance as well, because
the original blueprints using those original components were very
carefully designed to be cost-effective and suitable as complementary
components to an overall sound and design.  Not only will you not achieve
that sound they were after, you will also not achieve anywhere near their
performance because you are compromising both their design and yours.

If you want to build up an orchestrion, I strongly suggest getting my
book, "The Orchestrion Builder's Manual and Pneumatics Handbook" which
restates this very premise in more detail, and you will have an excellent
Orchestrion.

Stealing original components from original orchestrions to instrument
your own is kinda like buying somebody else's dental caps and bridges and
adapting them to work in your own mouth.  To the degree you can do this
successfully is about the same degree that you can do the other.  If an
orchestrion isn't great to hear year after year without getting tired of
it, then it really isn't a very good instrument!

So sell your original components to someone who has waited years to find
them!  Believe me, you'll help him and yourself, very much.  And thank
you-- from all of us!

Craig Brougher

 [ Amen, Brothers!  If you're building a machine for fun you can do it
 [ _right_, and avoid the degradation of a designed-to-cost product.
 [ Just like the guys who make high-performance cars.  -- Robbie