•In reply to Wally Venable's request for rally dates, this years DeBence Organ Grinders Rally will be on Friday and Saturday, August 3 and 4. To get a bigger crowd this year we have combined it with a "Taste of Franklin" festival featuring food prepared by various vendors. This usually draws a big c...

• Re: Andy Taylor's note in the 111204 MMD DeBence Museum has a complete and playable Columbus Boudoir player piano, built in 1907. With it we got a goodly number of playable rolls. We restored it, and the stack is like none other we have seen, with the valve seats crimped onto a piece of heavy, car...

•The DeBence museum was given a "kit" of parts to make a Deagan xylophone and beaters for our Nelson Wiggen style 6. Many of the pieces were done, but little assembly had been started. Well, I have it all together now and, as expected, it needs to be tuned. I understand that to raise the pitch of a ...

•Thanks for all the useful replies to my post. As an engineer I am ashamed that I did not do more research on the subject before asking. Anyway, thanks to all who responded; now on to see if I can make the theory work. Scotty Greene

•The DeBence Museum has been given a 28-note Tanzbär player accordion. The mechanism that connects the lever on the outside with the roll advance is entirely missing. I guess, from reading old posts on MMD, that some sort of flywheel parts are involved. Can someone please send us a photo or sketch w...

•At the DeBence museum we are disposing of things we cannot use. We have six or eight Violano music roll cores (the 14-1/4-inch inside the flanges metal cores that the perforated paper roll is stored on). We have no use for them, but figure someone else ought to need them. They are available for $10...

•The DeBence Museum has a Cremona which came to us missing all the stained glass in the four panels of the front (it's a Style C, per Bowers' "Encyclopedia"). Assuming we will never find original glass we would like to do a reasonably authentic duplication. In order to do so we need good photos of t...

•DeBence Museum has about twelve unboxed music rolls that we cannot identify. They are 10 inches wide, have a hole spacing of about 0.17 inches [6/inch] (the holes are 0.10 inches wide), have a cardboard tube inside diameter of 2.5 inches with a drive key 0.4 inches wide. They were made by Pianotist...

•Last week Time Magazine had a listing of influential events in history, and they list the first nickelodeon as playing in 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I expected an earlier date. Perhaps this hinges on the definition of "nickelodeon." Does anyone have any authoritative information on this subj...

•I add my voice to those recommending the use of the old hot glue for organ repairs. I spent about ten hours with a Dremel tool, cursing the person who rebuilt a German fairground organ pump using what appeared to be some sort of rubber glue. It had penetrated the wood to a surprising depth and resi...

•DeBence Museum has a street piano cart that came to us with a Chiappa barrel piano supposedly built about 1900 in London England. The piano is being restored, the cart is in decent shape. It carries a painted number with the letters "ALS No 28". Does anyone know what the number means? Scotty Greene...

•Susie Gratz posted a note about the Deansboro, New York, music museum and it's demise, wondering where there was another closer than South Dakota. DeBence Antique Music World is here in Western Pennsylvania, claiming to be the largest collection of self-playing music machines in the USA open to the...

•The DeBence Museum is still cleaning house and disposing of items we cannot use. We have two disc music box tune sheets for which we have no machines. First, a 15.5-inch disc marked Swiss Lowry, number 1016, titled "Where Is My Boy Tonight". No rust, a few small dents, generally in good condition. ...

•I recently purchased a wonderful Chickering Ampico B and have been enjoying it immensely. It is a lifelong dream come true! In addition to the satisfaction of playing the instrument and listening to rolls, I have some rather crazy and naive ideas about incorporating computer control into the instru...

•In addition to the MIDI player project, I'd like to take a stab at building a perforator. What type of punch do readers recommend? I'm talking about the piece that actually physically perforates the paper. David Greene [ MMDigest articles about music roll perforators are indexed at [ http://www.mmd...

•Thanks for everyone's help with my previous posting about the lifetime's worth of project ideas I have for our Ampico B. I would like to make a try at a MIDI player system and several people suggested that a "cut the tubing" inline valve system would work best. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the number a...

•Christmas brought a nice surprise in the form of the book, "Player Piano Servicing and Rebuilding," by Arthur Reblitz. I excitedly flipped to the section on the Ampico only to find that Reblitz makes heavy use of reference to both the Ampico 1929 service manual and David Saul's "The Model B Ampico ...

•I am gathering supplies and information to regulate the reproducing action on our Ampico B. A few of the keys depress but don't quite play the string using a roll and I am hoping the problem is either a piano action or reproducing action regulation issue. In any case, I'd like to diagnose the probl...

•I have a number of rolls in, shall we say, less than ideal condition and I would like to repair them. I want to build a double-ended repair table, so that I can work conveniently on the front and back sides of rolls. I'll need two sets of drive chucks and a take-up spool. Searches high on low on th...

•The DeBence Museum has come up with a group of ten 13.5-inch Symphonion tune sheets that we have no machine to play on. They are all playable, but some are dirty around the outer edge, and some have some surface rust. They all have outer gear drive holes, and a center drive square hole. We will not...