•My kids had a "Tuneyville Choo Choo" made by Tomy that has eight fixed-pitch plastic pipes that were played by a plastic disk equipped with pins on that resembled those found on a player barrel. There are four of these disks. The little thing was powered by two size 'C' cells [batteries]. We still ...

•-- non-subscriber, please reply to sender and MMD -- I found a radio-looking box at my great-uncle's cabin this weekend. It appears to be a music box player of some sort. It has a small, thin slot on the side where some kind of card or something would be inserted. The front says "Melodian" and has ...

•> I found a radio-looking box at my great-uncle's cabin this weekend. > It appears to be a music box player of some sort. It has a small, > thin slot on the side where some kind of card or something would be > inserted. The front says "Melodian" and has a dial: "Off, Slow, > Fast, Driving". There i...

•Here is my story regarding the lack of interest in automatic music instruments by younger people. I had my Wurlitzer 153 band organ (which is mounted in a custom truck) out at an Independence Day festival last year. I was parked not too far from a concession that was raising money for a charity by ...

•>[ For this discussion thread let's define "player piano" as the >[ piano with the foot pedals that plays a perforated paper music >[ roll. It's also the musical machine that displaced the pump >[ organ or harmonium in the parlour and that preceded the radio >[ set as the "home entertainment center...

•Some years ago I received a call from a gentleman who was 100 years old. He lived in a retirement home, and his pianola, A Steck half Duo- Art, had died. I drove the forty miles to see him. He could only walk at a shuffle, and his pedaling days were long gone. His Steck was a battered and bashed th...

•Having looked more closely at the band organ table favor, it is a work of art, the imprints in the wood, et al. To make just ten of these would be an ordeal for me, but 180 plus requires a lot of work and co-ordination. I had reason to remove the rear door because the batteries were gone, having on...

•Yes, the band organ table favor is really an incredible accomplishment. The little sheet accompanying it says there are more than 150 parts, cuts, imprints, and other work on each one, and this would just not have been possible if this was a commercial product. A tour du force and a labor of love. ...

•Much has been written about the disturbing demise of interest in mechanical musical instruments. A player piano in good condition, which could have been sold for two or three thousand dollars twenty- five years ago, would be hard to even give away today. This isn't the first time the market has tan...

•Alan Turner wrote in 110602 MMDigest: > Does anyone on MMD know of any more modern systems (read "direct > to digital") that have an audio AGC that can be disabled or is > non-existent? There are several digital recorders available with built-in microphones. I use a Tascam DR-07 recorder. It has AG...

•Hello MMD. This probably is a question for UK MMD subscribers. I have been having a tidy-up and repair onslaught of my 88-note rolls and I have arrived at a Meloto Standard Roll. It is No. 452?5E, "Dreaming Waltz", by Joyce. The number printed on the rather battered leader is all but illegible, and...

•I have a Hofbauer 26er Harmonipan I would like to sell. It has been fixed due to three broken valves. It has also been tuned by the same reputable restorer. It comes with the factory cart and nine cassettes of music. The only major thing wrong with it is that it does not have the batteries in it. I...

•Ralph Schultz asked in 131015 MMDigest: > ... why not just have a radio to plug into 110 volts rather than > generate 32 volts? Anyone got an answer? Because it is converting the AC to DC? Back in "the days" there was few electronics or electro-mechanical devices that would convert AC to DC, which ...

•They may be of interest to somebody, so I am offering a quantity of 50 good, 25-1/4-inch diameter Symphonion discs. These are the series that play on the sublime harmony evenly opposed comb model -- the 192 and Grand Monster (Symphs 'Mikado'), and not the diametrically opposed one with the huge pre...

•A couple of weeks ago I mentioned in 150712 MMDigest that I was looking for a pair of wireless MIDI units. One source mentioned Panda "midiBeam" units, manufactured by Elektromedia Ltd. Visit http://pandamidi.com/ and http://www.panda-audio.com/midibeam.php I ordered a set of those and they arrived...

•Hi calliope lovers, I was intrigued by Art Reblitz's question on calliopes and old trucks. I don't have the one he was inquiring after but another, similar in intent. In the early 1990s Mike Hanchett built a few Tangley-type machines. One he mounted in a 'circus wagon' on the back of a 1952 Interna...

•The whistler cometh... So I was at this lady's house to take her Mauthe wall clock's movement home with me to fix and I'd almost gotten away clean when she said, "Wait." I knew this meant trouble and it was. She handed me this wood carving of a guy leaning against a lamp post. "He whistles," said s...

•Hello. I have a Tuneyville player piano that won't power up. It was our child's, a gift in 1979, much loved and carefully cared for. It was put away in the toy chest until a year ago. I opened the front and didn't see any broken wires or loose ones. The keys on the keyboard are connected to their h...

In the Digest of 18.04.96 (Australian Date-writing Style!), Steve Harder enquires whether anyone has plans of an expression box from a Recordo player. Well, I haven't got plans, Steve, but I have a spare expression box. It is an Electora model A, serial no. 8795, made by the Motor Player Co. of Chic...

The timing of early "Stoddard" Ampicos on the slow crescendo was 11 seconds and fast crescendo about 2 sec. The timing of the later model Ampicos was 9 sec--slow crescendo, and 1.5 to 2 sec. fast cresc. The slow crescendo timing wasn't that critical, since the _average_ slow crescendo was used for m...