Hello, I am Klaus Biber, restaurateur of mechanical music instruments.
This is a little essay about my work.

My mother decided I should have a musician's ear, and because of that I
had to learn to play the piano.  From my fathers side I inherited fingers
to work, not to play the piano.  So after school in 1980 I decided to be
an organbuilder.  But what a surprise -- I never built any church organs,
I only restored mechanical music instruments.  Altogether I worked 12
years for this firm where I also made my course of instruction.  We
restored for "Technisches Museum" Sinzheim, "Uhrenmuseum" Furtwangen and
many other museums and collectors of mechanical music instruments.

For the last four years I have been working independently in my own firm.
In Autumn 1994 Dr. Metzger, the Director of the MMM (Museum Mechanischer
Musikinstrumente im Schloss Bruchsal) asked me to work there as a
restorer.  In the beginning I worked together with Horst King, a
70-year-old restorer with much experience.  Since half a year I alone
have had the care of these 400 instruments in Bruchsal.  I work there
five days a month; you can imagine that it is only enough time to look
after the functioning, but not enough for restoration.

Barrel organs, player pianos, orchestrions, flute-playing clocks, street-
organs and nearly every other mechanical music instruments have been here
in my workshop.  I prefer the pneumatic instruments like Hupfeld, Welte
and Weber.  This way I hope to find congenial persons to exchange ideas
or problems of mechanical music instruments.

Bis denn [Until then],

Klaus Biber

 [ A hearty welcome to MMD, Klaus.  Once again, I am very impressed with
 [ the Apprentice System in Europe.  You must have really enjoyed working
 [ with the Master technicians at the firm where you spent 12 years.
 [ -- Robbie