Marc Kaufman:

> Charles Hind has built a beautiful music box.  The metal is gorgeous, the
> wood box is full of inlay.  This was his second(!) music box project.  The
> first was a Maniville (hand cranked).  His design was conservative: three
> tunes with tooth tips 0.100" apart.  Larger than average cylinder pins.

How big was the cylinder?  Did he go for something like an 11" antique
reproduction, or did he stick to the 6" modern Reuge style size?  I notice
Reuge seems to have standardized on 3 tunes per cylinder, perhaps he was
using their parts bin?

What did he do for a spring-motor?  Did he wind his own, or buy it, and
if the latter from where?  I realize you might not have all these details,
but if you do, or have some guesses based on what you saw, I'd be very
interested.

> >I didn't run into any _known_ subscribers

> Don't I count as a known subscriber?

Well, there is known and there is _known_.  I didn't talk to anyone
that I realized was a subscriber at the time.  :)

General Music Box Project Update:

I have made some progress in getting my workshop set up, but I still
have a way to go.  I've done some research on tools, however, and I
think that tools to build music boxes are available, but you need to
be clever about getting them and adapting them.  Little will work
right out of the box.

Mechanisms: S. Rose claims to sell very large and powerful spring
motors, but the size needed for a decent music box is not a standard
catalog item, and I've not yet seen a reasonably large motor.  I will
follow up with them when I get a chance.  I've located a book that
tells how to machine combs for musical boxes, which Nancy will be
mailing me sometime after she gets her head screwed back on after the
show (couple weeks I expect ;) as well as some tangential, but fascin-
ating information on orchestrion construction in the "Orchestrion
Builder's Manual" - which I also ordered, I'll review it here when
I've seen more of it.

I've located a supplier of Sherline tools adapted for computer
control.  Sherlines are legendary for high accuracy and repeatability,
but they have small work areas - good for all the tiny parts a music
box needs, but too small to work _directly_ on the base plate or to
drill and pin the cylinder.  However, I think it may be possible to
add jigs to one that will enable large pieces to be worked through
the unit under computer control that might enable the lathe to drill
and pin an entire cylinder.  I intend to follow this path when I get
to that point, but if this works, then I will essentially have a gen-
eral midi-to-hardware device that could churn out high-quality cylin-
ders very rapidly compared to the traditional way.  Does anyone think
this might be a useful/profitable sideline?  Barry Johnson seems to
have found a niche with repro disks, but I haven't seen that much for
interchangeable cylinders, nor are they as standardized.  How much
would a custom music box be worth to people?  Points to ponder.  It
seems like a waste to build a device capable of building hundreds,
or thousands, or cylinders and just use it to make a half-dozen for
my own projects, but I doubt I could produce even those few cylinders
any other way.

Boxes: We're just talking carpentry here, but _master_ carpentry.
Those fancy boxes are not trivial to reproduce.  There are some
intaglio kits that might produce nice looking boxes without looking
like a _reproduction_, but the one I ordered arrived with half the
parts missing and no templates or directions - $40 for a box of
scrap wood.  I'd be careful about ordering such stuff again.  It
is fairly easy to find strips of veneer, but I've not located a
supplier of sheets.  Given the cost and availability of the kind
of hardwoods we like to see on a music box, this is the only way
to go nowadays, but I wonder how much is sold in sheets and how
much just goes for edging.  Anyone have some suggestions?

Music: Most of the progress regarding musical arrangements has
been in this list, so I won't go into huge detail.  The current
plan, which has a number of interested parties that we're going
to try to organize, is to use a genetic algorithm to construct a
midi file that when played sounds like the input analog wave form.
How good this will be depends on a lot of factors.  For getting
midi descriptions of music box music based on music box recordings,
I suspect pretty good.  For getting music box _arrangements_ of
non-music box recordings, I can't guess - but, the only alternative
will require a master's degree in digital signal processing, which
happens to be a fairly esoteric branch of computer science with
which I am not familiar, so it's worth a try.

Other stuff - a book review:¶
I think I mentioned earlier that I picked up a copy of Larry Karp's
book "The Enchanted Ear" about his introduction and experiences in
the music box world.  I found it an easy and fast read, and partic-
ularly enjoyed his description of "Willy" the music-box hacker (though
I, too, agonized at the death of that blameless little music box) and
found his story about the "ultimate" music box especially interesting,
since, as it turns out (and I don't really think this is a spoiler,
but consider yourselves warned) the "ultimate" box _was_ a computer,
doing an arrangement of Beethoven's 5th symphony - the _whole_ sym-
phony, not an abridged version.  I've calculated that a music box
about three feet long, with four rotary cylinders each about five
inches in diameter, could play the described "enchanting" arrangement.
He mentioned he was working with this computer type to produce a version
of the 9th symphony as well.  This fellow may have a lot of useful in-
put into new musical boxes, though he is fairly non-computer-literate
himself, I wonder if we couldn't get him onto this list.  I intend to
try to contact him and see about it.

regards,¶
Larry