Hi, my name is Bill Masterman and reside in Tacoma, Washington.  I have
been reading MMD for over a year but am now subscribing.  For a living,
I operate a coin operated vending and amusement machine route of over
800 vending machines, video and pinball games, jukeboxes, etc.  My
hobbies include restoring and collecting old fire engines and,
foremost, 0-roll orchestrion build-ups.

My love of orchestrions all began as an 8-year-old child visiting the
Steves Gay Nineties restaurant here in Tacoma.  My parents would take
the family there weekly, and I would always blow a couple dollars worth
of dimes in the orchestrion at the entrance of the restaurant.  I was
purely fascinated with it!  Steves has long since closed its doors but
my fond memories never died.

Four years ago, there was an auction of a fellow game operators
business here in town.  Low and behold, there was an old orchestrion
as part of the auction that I had to have to relive these childhood
memories.  Needless to say, I packed the heavy thing home not knowing
its condition even what it was.  Turns out, its a build-up of a circa
1892 Vose piano with lots of Player Piano Co. components.  Now I was
hooked, and have acquired several more orchestrions in the past few
years.

The most current project is based on a 1970 vintage Aeolian spinet with
case extension making it 6 feet tall.  I had a yearning for a player
organ as well, and picked up a Wilcox & White symphony player reed
organ in neighboring Seattle.  Its previous owner had it set up to play
electrically in conjunction with his pipe organ.

Then came the thought: What would this organ sound like if it was
connected to the Aeolian orchestrion?  A call to Brian Thornton of
Short Mountain Music brought me a custom-built electrical interface
pouch board, set up with very little bleed, to be teed in with the
tracker bar tubing.  Next, a power supply was connected to the
interface and the organ was playing with the orchestrion and sounded
quite well indeed.

Since then, an electrically operated German Harmonium has been added,
as well as 2 ranks of remote pipes, and even a second piano (an
electrically operated 1920s Autopiano).  The basement has pretty well
been transformed to an orchestra of sorts.

Anyone living or visiting the area is welcome to stop by and check out
the toys.  Looking forward to being part of the group!

Bill Masterman
Tacoma WA
253-565-9470

 [ Welcome to MMD, Bill.  I'm glad you know MMDer Brian Thornton;
 [ he's a fine and resourceful orchestrion tech.  Good luck with
 [ your projects!  -- Robbie