•> ... we are not getting enough sustain on the high notes ... One easy way of obtaining longer ring times is the use of resonators. A tuned resonator, acoustically coupled to the bar, will noticeably extend the note as it does for instruments like the marimba and celesta ("Chrysoglott" in a theatre...

•As Art Reblitz reminded us recently, his book, "The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments," has a large appendix of musical scales, excerpted from his "Treasures of Mechanical Music," a very comprehensive encyclopedia of mechanical musical instrument scales of all kinds. Art's appendix shows ...

•I have worked with brass trumpets, including North Tonawanda. The overall nominal tuning of the organ -- the violins and open flutes, in particular -- is the baseline for where the trumpets need to be tuned. A set of brass has some half-length resonators, and it is imperative to get correct resonat...

•I want to thank Mechanical Music Digest for their help finding people that helped me tune my North Tonawanda band organ. This is a great group of people. I also want to thank the people that took the time e-mail me with helpful information, Damian Mayes, Alan Erb and Matthew Caulfield. I especially...

•I am working on an Artizan 46-note Style A-2 with three trombone pipes and it had been in storage for over 30 years. Could you please tell me what wind pressure the organ was designed to use? I want to get it back to the original wind pressure. Every part of the instrument is being reworked. As of ...

•I've been asked to tune a barrel organ. The makers stamp is Montanini, Gastaldi and Pomella Navara, Italia. The strings have notes stamped above them. Starting with the longest strings, some are D E F# A H G# A H. Is anyone familiar with this instrument? Is anyone familiar with the scale and what o...

•My piano tuner asked me how to tune a Wurlitzer self-playing harp. There is no test roll available and there are no indications on the pin block (anymore). Is there anyone who has a tracker bar scale, or some other information like which string is middle A? Thank you in advance, Mark Stikkelbroek, ...

•The Wurlitzer Automatic Harp has a scale of 60 notes, fully chromatic, from F to E. Good luck. Nicholas Simons, GB

•Hello, Mark, It is rather easy to tune a Wurlitzer harp. It is just chromatic, like a piano. In fact, if I remember correctly, the music was actually arranged by Whitlock's sister, who was a piano teacher. Anyway, you can just tune it in sequence like any piano. _But,_ and it is a big "but," be ver...

•Hi, A couple of people asked about the tuning instructions for the Wurlitzer Harp, so I scanned the original "Operation and Care Directions" that came with the harp and sent them to Robbie for the MMD Archives. Personally, I think it's just easier to use an electronic tuner. I even have a little ha...

•I'm working on an article for tuning the Schmider crank organ but have no tuning scales. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated. Happy Cranking, Angelo Rulli St. Paul, Minnesota [ A video of a Schmider 16-key crank organ is presented at [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQJKRBHjutw The Johann Sc...

•Hi all, in the process of rebuilding a Seeburg xylophone for my late (1928) Seeburg E nickelodeon, I discovered that the xylophone bars are tuned to A=435 Hz as opposed to the later day 440 Hz. Is it easy to tune the bars to 440 Hz or is it better to tune the piano to 435 Hz? The xylophone and regu...

•I restored a Seeburg L in 2009 and my piano technician, who was re-stringing it, wanted to tune it to A=440, so I posed the question to Art Reblitz. He confirmed that virtually all orchestrions, apart from Nelson-Wiggen, stuck with A=435 till they ceased production in 1929. So your xylophone is rig...

•Without exception, every Seeburg E or K that I have seen playing a xylophone had a J.C. Deagan xylophone tuned to A=435. It is ever so slight a drop in pitch compared to A=440. I would never try to retune to A=440 an old xylophone that was originally made as A=435. I have a xylophone in my collecti...

•Given that original Seeburgs would appear to have A=435 tuning to the xylophone, does this necessarily mean that the piano would also have had the same tuning applied? The reason I ask is that in the Edgerton Repro Seeburg KT Special Handbook, it states that the piano is tuned to A=440. I wonder wh...

•Just a general comment here. I have a 25-note J. C. Deagan xylophone that goes from G to G and is marked A=440. From what I could gleam from the various Bowers and Reblitz books, this xylophone might have come from a Link piano. Did Link tune their any of their pianos to A=440? Wade Newton ...

•Hello, there seems to be confusion about A=435 Hz and A=440 Hz tuning. The 1937 international symposium on tuning adopted as standard 435 Hz at 15 degrees centigrade. This had been used by the majority of builders (but not all) for some years. This is very close to 440 Hz at 20 degrees centigrade, ...

•As was reported, we tuned the piano of our instruments to A=440 and the xylophone was similarly tuned. A piano at A=440 and a xylophone at A=435 or any other frequency would sound awful. When you hear a nickelodeon with a xylophone that sounds really out of tune, the piano tuning probably has gone ...

•I have rebuilt my Black Forest flute clock to play and made all the missing pipes. It has three ranks with a total of 69 pipes. The top register is as short as is practical to make, the bottom rank just fits in the cabinet. Three octaves would mean the top register would have pipes less than a cent...

•John Harrold wrote in 110221 MMDigest: "... there seems to be confusion about A=435 Hz and A=440 Hz tuning. The 1937 international symposium on tuning adopted as standard 435 Hz at 15 degrees centigrade. This had been used by the majority of builders (but not all) for some years. This is very close...