•The rock and roll bands in the 1950s used a keyboard operated bell machine (glock) called a 'Jenco'. It worked very well in the studio, but required microphone pickups to get enough volume on stage. I have always thought of it as a Chrysoglott, since it has a piano-like hammer striking a metal bar ...

•Craig Brougher's post reminded me of another difference between the chrysoglott and other organ-related metallophones: the bars are much thicker, making the tone resonate for much longer. I have seen them with bars of steel and aluminum, with aluminum having the longer 'ring'. I have seen two chrys...

•Hal Davis sent me a tip about this sculpture by Tim Hawkinson that was displayed (in 2001) at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. At http://www.gardendome.com/uberorgan/Uberorgan.html : "Tim describes it as a giant self-playing reed organ. ... Twelve large reservoir balloons are collector...

•Although the first patented steam calliope was a self-playing barrel operated instrument, little has been printed in automatic musical instrument publications on this subject. Lee Munsick's article was very interesting and welcome. Here are a few more notes on this complex and much neglected subjec...

•Time to make room for a new toy (sound familiar?)! I am excited about the upcoming addition of a Chickering Ampico B to my collection and wanted to offer a few extra things to the membership if interested. 1. Maas Organ Co. 32-note chime set with electromagnetic action and power source: $375.00 2. ...

•MDF is not used on pipe organ construction for many reasons, but the most notable, after esthetics, is that each organ pipe is scaled to the pipes above and below it. This is both in width versus speaking length and in pipe wall thickness. You cannot plane down MDF to keep the pipe wall thickness i...

•Hans van Oost wrote in 020924 MMDigest: > As I stated before, organ pipes can be made of any material ... Interesting. Has anybody made nickelodeon pipes from PVC pipe? I'm tempted to try it, and wonder if there is any reason why it wouldn't work. Larry Mayo [ PVC pipe has the characteristics desir...

•Hi there MMD'rs and Art Thompson. I have been following the articles about the continued trouble with the Johnson band organ at the Salem Riverfront Carousel. It does sound like from your post that the organ may have some definite design trouble in its operational systems. I also cannot believe tha...

•First rule of working with musical boxes: Don't take it apart with tension on the spring. Not letting down the spring (and also taking care to remove the Geneva stop before letting down the spring) causes more damage to musical boxes than anything that could be imagined. If you don't know what it m...

•I would like to build a keyboard instrument based on the Savart wheel for our science museum. A Savart wheel (physicists always feel obliged to assign a proper name to every possible demonstration) is nothing more than a rotating toothed wheel. You push a card against the rotating teeth to make a s...

•In 051102 MMDigest, Jack Conway writes: > ... When tuning was started it was tuned to A=424 Hz. I asked if it > could be taken up to A=440, which has caused some pipes to go crazy > just as they were about to reach pitch. They may just need repair, > as the tuner has been doing as we go along ..." ...

•Hi Nigel, There's one very good reason why you shouldn't make trumpet pipes using harmonium reeds: the pipes you make definitely will not sound like trumpet pipes. There are two kinds of reeds: free reeds and beating reeds. Harmonium (and accordion and harmonica) reeds are free reeds. That is, the ...

•I would just like to say a big 'thank you' to everyone who has contributed their advice on this subject. Most people feel that there is no reason not to use them, although the sound will be quieter and more mellow. Given that the Orchestrelle uses just this system with a strange wooden resonator to...

•Eric, That was a very interesting web site. Recently Google has placed the entire U.S. patent database under keyword search. I have had fun searching for old mechanical music patents. I noticed someone patented an organ pipe with sympathetic strings attached to the resonator. It is sort of the oppo...

•I am starting to make the trumpet pipes for a MIDI-controlled version of a Wurlitzer 104/105 band organ. I have metal working tools and I plan to make the shallots and reeds following the dimensions used by Wurlitzer. It seems to me that if I could test and trim the wooden resonator to the correct ...

•I wish I could be more specific, but a reed with a shallot or a free reed produces anything but a sine wave. In fact, the free reed produces all kinds of harmonics, and the beating reed, when it snaps closed, gives sharp peaks. I cannot recall seeing a reed pipe without some kind of adjustment to t...

•I must profess to never having built a band organ but the details of organ pipe design cannot be too different from a regular pipe organ so here is my humble response to the question: When building a reed that is cut exactly to the resonant length it is said to be cut "dead length." But this is not...

•For Les Higger (080915 MMDigest): One note lower for F is not E but E-flat. F-sharp becomes E. There is more to consider than just tuning the organ. If the organ is designed for a certain pitch, tuning it one note lower could make the slides or stoppers loosen in the pipe causing the pipe to go off...

•There were theatre (cinema) organs built with singing bird pipes in chromatic order. The Regal Marble Arch organ [London] comes to mind. I have made two of these sets of tuned bird whistles many years ago. The compass is usually no more than 18 notes. The pipes are not like most organ flue pipes wh...

•Dear Friends, For an ongoing research project I am seeking detailed data, good quality photos, and audio recording(s) of cylinder music boxes attributed to Alphonse Malignon. His boxes are usually keywind type with brass bedplates and red stained case interior, made between about 1842 and 1853. The...