Hi, all.  My name is Larry Smith, I'm a programmer for
Digital Equipment - lot of software folks around here,
I can see from the archives.  Must be part of the mind
set.

I've always loved mechanical devices - maybe in reaction
to the highly non-mechanical devices that are part of my
living - but I've always had the best affinity for musical
devices.  Music has always been very important to me, and
music boxes have a special sound and quality all their own.

This was purely a latent interest until just a few months
ago, when I discovered a couple books on the subject that
went into the history of music boxes, the most informative
being the Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments,
which I'm sure is no surprise on this list.  I was abso-
lutely amazed at the huge industry that had flourished
and vanished before I was born.  And it's a damn shame,
too - synthesizers and samplers can do amazing things, but
there is just something about _hearing_ the real instrument
that makes for a better experience.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered the Musical Wonder House
Museum in Wiscasset, Maine.  I sent a review of the museum
to the net, and I've appended it below.  I'd never imagined
so many different types of music boxes!

I started my collection with a 4 1/2 Reuge (actually, Thorens)
disk box from the San Francisco Music Box company.  I couldn't
justify the normal price, but it happened to be in March, and
the SFMBC offers a 25% discount for your birth month, so I got
it.  I was pleased to latch onto it, even though it is far
from antique, though it is a nice piece.  Sometime later, I
discovered two very nice cylinder boxes in antique stores for
not-too-bad prices.  One was a very nice-sounding model needing
new dampers and casework, the other was a plain, but rather neat
orchestral box which had suffered a bad run and needed repinning,
not to mention new dampers, casework, etc. etc.  It's now being
restored at the Musical Wonder House, where it will shortly be
joined by the cylinder box.  For genuine antique collector's
items, I prefer to let real experts - experienced people - do
the actual work, but I'm very interested in building musical
boxes based on what I've learned recently.  I'll be mostly
thinking along those lines as I read along, and I believe Jody
has passed along a few of those thoughts already.

Here's the review of the Musical Wonder House:

The Musical Wonder House

"Preserving the Sounds of the Past"

On two recent occasions I had the opportunity to visit
this fascinating museum based in Wiscasset, Maine.  The
proprietor, Danilo Konvalinka, has been collecting musical
boxes since 1957, and his collection is now overflowing a
large elegant home on High Street in downtown Wiscasset.

The collection includes hundreds and hundreds of boxes,
from an 1815 cylinder to a 1994 reproduction cylinder,
it fills eight large rooms and two central halls.  Very
nearly all of them are in prime condition after painstaking
restoration.

There are two tours available, a lower-story tour, which
is $10 a person and takes an hour, and a whole-house tour
taking 3 hours and costing $30 a person.  During the tour you
will have the opportunity to hear a dozen or more beautiful
musical boxes, along with a scattering of reproducing pianos
and barrel organs, and the odd windup phonograph or two.  The
central hallway on the lower story can be toured unsupervised,
and is filled with coin-operated musical boxes, restored in
every detail but one: they take quarters where they used to
take pennies.  Bring lots.

Some other standout pieces include several magnificent
orchestra boxes including a number with percussion, bell
and reed or pipe organ effects, a number of large disk
units including a Regina disk model built into a round
table, and a number of automata of various types to
round out the collection.

The Musical Wonder House has a store in the back that
sells new and restored musical boxes, and a companion
store in Lexington, Mass. that has an even larger selection.
It also does restoration work, which I will be able to report
on in more detail once they finish my own orchestral cylinder
box, which needs the cylinder repinned and extensive case work.
They can even repair broken combs (thankfully not necessary
on my box).

The Musical Wonder House is open from Memorial Day to
October most days.  Lower-story tours are available
any time, whole-house tours must be arranged (and are
well worth it) by calling (207) 882-7163.  Tell them
I sent you - I don't get any benefit from that, but it
might encourage Mr. Konvalinka to set up a web site so
people who can't get to Maine can still enjoy a bit of
his collection.

This seems to be a very active list, and I'm sure it's
no small amount of work for Jody to maintain it.  With
luck, we'll shortly be hearing from a couple more enthusiasts
here at Digital that I passes this along to, but with 100 people,
it seems to me we have enough to warrant a newsgroup.  If folks
here think kindly of the idea, I'd be willing to start the
process rolling.  I've become a bit of a patron-saint for
teeny newsgroups, my most recent effort (which passed)
was rec.arts.puppetry.

  [ Editor's note:
  [
  [ I've got posted some comments about this issue in an
  [ article later.
  [

In addition to music boxes, I'm also keen on organs of
various types.  Several have been mentioned in the
archives, but I wonder if everyone is aware of the organ
in Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Mass.  The building is
interesting in its own right, but for the folks here, the
best part is it was literally built around an enormous
pipe organ - a favorite of Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs.
Sadly, the organ is out of commission right now, though
you can hear tapes of it on the tour of the castle, but
you can still see the console and some of the pipes - a
few of the 8200 of them (yes, eight _thousand_, two hundred
pipes, the largest privately-owned organ ever).  Some of the
pipes rise three stories or more in the towers of the castle.
Hammond, no relation to the organ-building Hammonds, was
America's second-most prolific inventor after Edison, with
over 800 patents to his name, and he could _not_ play the
organ!  When he didn't have some big-name guest, he used
rolls - yes, it was (and is) a player-organ.

I have a small grinder-type organ of my own, a recent
acquisition, and a dozen rolls - which need to be recut,
they are in too poor shape to be played.  But they don't
much resemble piano rolls, the cutouts control the wind
directly, so I wonder if any of the roll-cutters on the
list can handle rolls with such large cutouts, and
relatively few notes across the width?

Well, that should be more than enough for now.

regards,¶
Larry Smith