As Robbie requested, here's the list of phono and player-piano duets from booklet "Good Times With Your Gulbransen:" The accompanying text says: "Here is a stunt that will surprise nearly everybody -- to hear a phonograph sing while you play an accompaniment on the Gulbransen. The wonder is how you ...

•Three CDs, three very different Rachmaninoffs ! Without much else to do on a Sunday, I pulled out my copy of Wayne Stahnke's new CD (Telarc 80489) and a London Digital remaster of the 1978 recording (London 425 964-2) produced by Peter Wadland. Wadland's recording featured a 9-foot Estonia grand wi...

•Hello, Read the Apollophone text in the current MMD. We have one, though it was never restored. There were 2 types, at least, by the way: one had two spring motors, with the gramophone being _independent_ of the spring-drive for the music rolls, and the other was an "either/or" model wherein the ow...

•Removing in real time: 1. SAE made a "click, pop, scratch eliminator" 20 years ago. It still works today. You can find them used on eBay. It operated by eliminating transients above a certain slew rate and patching the interrupted waveforms together. It was not good at eliminating "hiss". 2. Phase ...

•I received the following message from one Peter Eisler who is trying to locate rolls made by his pianist/conductor grandfather, to wit: - - - Dear Mr. Petrak: My name is Peter Eisler and I came across the RPRF web site while searching for recordings featuring my grandfather, Paul Eisler, who was a ...

•Hello MMD readers, Back in 1999, I posted a history of presenting the player piano as a playback device along the lines of audio. To make a programmed mechanical musical instrument into a phonograph type of device is a musical impossibility, but it was an effective marketing campaign for the reprod...

•"If you can't afford to advertise, do something newsworthy," is an old saying. Street organs were banned in New York City in 1936. The law was repealed in 1976. We brought them back in 2006. April 9, 2006 was a great day in Coney Island, when the Lady Liberty Chapter of AMICA, Intl., and Coney Isla...

•I am recovering from the flu and was sleeping this afternoon. I dreamed that I was examining a late drop-action spinet piano and discovered that it was an 88-note player with an unusual difference. It seems that the piano had an unusual addition to the tracker bar. I'm not exactly sure if it had a ...

•The web site giving information about my Aeolian pipe organ is being updated. It is time to remove the site's Christmas music and replace it. In thinking about how to use the site, I have come up with a concept of an ever changing podcast. Each new podcast will be unique. Some podcasts will feature...

•Randolph Herr: NYC Metro Area Celebrity & Longtime Friend Randolph traveled the New York city metro area, with his 65/88-note Pianola and his foot-pedaled Steinway grand, entertaining and educating the public about automatic music. Randolph would perform at venues such as library and school auditor...

•I'm one of the few experienced roll player techs in the New York Metropolitan Area. I have several customers who use their player pianos to make money for their businesses and institutions. One of the local school districts, Kings Park, New York, dedicated one-half of an elementary school for a mus...

•I am writing an article on player piano/phonograph combinations for the Antique Phonograph Society. In my research, I found that Melville Clark and Aeolian both had expectations that the piano could be played in concert with the phonograph. Both companies had designs and patents to allow some form ...

Marc's query as to known subscribers struck me as an interesting question. Marc's last posting was less than 3 weeks ago. For fun I tried pulling the names from the digest index. Doing this brought up two problems: 1) there are some postings that were forwarded, so a few of the names below are NOT s...

•Jeez, I had forgotten about this Batman episode until now. Here's more details than you probably care to know. Randy Hayno wrote: > I remember my favorite Batman episode co-starring Liberace and his > evil identical twin brother (also played by Liberace). The episodes were "The Devil's Fingers" and...

•In 031105 MMDigest, Christine Robinson alluded to what may be a misconception about converting mechanical music machines to MIDI. It was stated: > But, and this is a big but, I would miss my old piano rolls, the > boxes, their musty smell, and all the history that goes with it. > I would miss the m...

•Several MMD readers have asked me to write about how to put on a successful organ rally. This is like asking me, who has a half built Castlewood, to advise Don Stinson on how to build a band organ! I will share some ideas, but I hope that others will pick up where I leave off and add what I leave o...

•I found a batch of vintage player piano rolls (Atlas, Schettino, Opera Selections, Irving Berlin, etc). The rolls are in good condition, some boxes are damaged. 01) Virtuoso dance roll (no. 197) Valse Fantastico. Valzer di N. MENFI 02) Atlas word roll (no.984) DINAH Fox trot song 1926 (H. Waterson...

•Help needed in saving carousel Dear MMD friends: I started the new year on a bad note. I learned that the carousel which I operated while in high school and college is slated for the auction block in April. It's at Whalom Park, Lunenburg, Massachusetts. The park, and especially the carousel, were p...

•Hello Robbie, I assume that Weitkirch is a typo and should read Waldkirch! [ Fortunately it wasn't my error; that's the spelling in the [ summary sent to Matthew Walworth from the German news service [ DE-NEWS. -- Robbie The town of Waldkirch has made negotiations with Jens Carlson, the owner of an...

•I used to use Schafer Bros. Piano Movers of Carson, California, and then I heard quite a bit of negative comment about them. Having just received another mailing promoting the breadth of their service, I was wondering if recent experience with Schafer Bros. for piano moving has been positive or neg...