[ I asked Mark to tell us more about the guitar microphone that
 [ he used successfully.  -- Robbie

Hi Robbie,  I am going back to the early 1980s when we tried the
guitar mic for recording discs.  This was initially a suggestion to me
by Bob Minney (see "The Disc Musical Box Handbook", by Graham Webb,
publ. by Faber and Faber, London, 1971).  He had used this method for
amplification to great effect when he travelled the showground circuits
here in the UK back in the 1970s and early 80s, in a van which he had
quite splendidly fitted out to look like a Victorian parlour.

I went into the local music equipment shop and bought a small guitar
mic, as described and shown to me by Bob; it was wired with a monaural
female phono jack.  I guess it was of a magnetic reluctance type as
this was the first of several cheap microphones I tried that actually
gave an undistorted feedback.

From memory, the mic was designed to be mounted under guitar strings.
I remember mounting it directly to the underside of both a 15-1/2"
and a 19-5/8" Poly bedplate in close proximity to the cut outs where
the resonators live.

Bob mounted his immediately under the comb mid-section nearer to the
tooth's root than to the resonator.  I did try this method but got some
squeals and wails that sounded like some rock band on a drug-fueled
frenzy.

Sorry to be so vague, but my experiments were more out of curiosity
and the novelty factor.  I recorded only a few tunes and at that time
I didn't see the point of progressing further.

Now it's a different story and I would like to make a project of
recording and cataloguing my collection of hundreds and hundreds
(if not thousands) of discs onto a computer for quick retrieval.

As a result of my posting I had an e-mail from a fellow MMD subscriber
in The Netherlands.  He pointed out that it would be a cool idea to
have a web site 'You Disc' -- the opportunities would be endless.

On a last note, I will ring Bob Minney, who is still with us, and see
what he remembers.  Bob has a much higher capacity for technical
understanding than myself.  Despite being close on 80 years he has
razor sharp total re-call.  Frustratingly, he won't entertain the idea
of a PC, which is a shame for all of us concerned with mechanical music.

Kind regards,
Mark Singleton