•One of my few musical talents is to be able to play a reasonable tune on an old 6-chord zither that I "re-constructed" many years ago out of what looked like a pile of firewood and fencing wire from a country auction. Rebuilding "The Australian Piano Harp - Made in Germany" was the easy part; playi...

•I have a customer with a Smith & Barnes piano. She wants it converted to a nickelodeon that would play a wood xylophone and perhaps other instruments. Does anyone have experience with a good source of xylophone and components to make the piano into a coin-operated nickelodeon? Carl Kehret ...

•Two weeks ago I received a piano for conversation from a pumper to a long-roll frame to play "A" rolls. The piano will be used in a "saloon" at a local tourist attraction and while the live pianist takes a break, the piano will play automatically. As the truck with the piano came though the gate I ...

•In a message dated 10/15/98 2:56:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time, rolls@foxtail.com writes: > Subject: Steam Calliope Tuning > > How do you tune a calliope? > > Meta Brown > Greetings, In December of 1979 I had the opportunity to prepare a 20 whistle steam calliope to play in the Jan. 1, 1980 Tournamen...

•I have a Regina 15.5 inch disc music box. It plays a song in about 50 seconds. This seems a little fast to me. What is the proper duration for a Regina 15.5 music box to play a song? Thanks, G. W. Finger

•"A Brass Band In A Piano? Give Me A Brake!" Pete Knobloch gave a very good analysis of the play-brake problems encountered on player pianos in 001023 MMD. The reason I say that is because he came to the same conclusions I did when I analyzed the problem a few years back! While I doubt that there ar...

•In order to get a "feel" for the minimum amount of vacuum that one is able to play a piano at, we should first consider the pneumatic itself. The treble pneumatic in most Duo-Arts measures 1-3/8" wide and 4" long. This equates to 5.5" square. When 2.5" of vacuum is directly applied to this pneumati...

•Who can tell me : what is the right speed to play a large metal disc (62.5 cm, or 24.6 inch) in a large Polyphon? Right now to play a disc (one revolution) I need 1 minute 57 seconds. Thanks for your help Francoise Dussour from Mirecourt

•Dick Day wrote: > I actually remember when you could play a juke box for a nickel, > or six tunes for a quarter. I'm too young to remember getting six of anything for a quarter, but I love my 1936 Wurlitzer juke box. It was 3 coin slots: 1 song for a nickel, 2 songs for a dime and 5 songs for a qua...

•In a letter of 7 May, 1923, W Creary Woods wrote from Aeolian, New York, to Reginald Reynolds in London: "There has not been any radical change in any of our instruments, especially the Weber and Steinway pianos. In the small Aeolian Grand and one of the cheaper Uprights there was a change made in ...

•Nice to read about Richard Simonton in 090212 MMDigest [Play a Wurlitzer Harp for Elevator "Muzak"]. He was a fine friend of mine who contributed a lot of stuff for my "Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments", and more. For a number of years I would go and watch movies on Saturday nights in ...

•I addressed a problem years ago on MMD with modern spinet players tearing rolls on rewind, but your problem is different: the upper spool is out of alignment. You actually should be able to play a roll with the automatic tracker disconnected. If it is constantly shifting the roll during play then i...

•I still remember the first time that I tried to play a roll with the old Artemis player action in the piano. I had gotten _everything_ fixed -- or so I thought. Lo and behold, when I pumped, nothing happened. It took me a while after that to realize that it takes a lot more than just "hooking up ho...

In a message dated 95-06-05 00:06:44 EDT, you write: > Subj: MIDI -> Pianocorder > Date: 95-06-05 00:06:44 EDT > From: mfontana@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark Fontana) > To: WillWiz@aol.com > > > Hi, > > I just read the latest Automatic Music Digest with your discussion of > the Pianocorder tape fo...

There is a great music box museum, right near the Rhine in Germany, that includes a preserved workshop of one of the German master musicbox makers. Apparently this guy could read music and push pins very rapidly. In his old house, they have a large number of original boxes from hand-held to concert ...

In a message dated 96-06-30 14:08:05 EDT, Terry Smythe writes: > > To my ear, the most impressive large organ was Ken Smith's 86(?) key > Gavioli, attracting a consistently appreciative audience. His musical > arrangements were outstanding, characterized by no cut-outs. His most > impressive selecti...

•Andy Taylor and I did a most remarkable thing this week. I think we may have been among the first to do so. I was able to "mount and play a roll" on Andy Taylor's player piano from 1,500 miles away! I found this quite remarkable and had to brag about it to my friends and coworkers. Let me explain. ...

•There were a number of individual comments in MMDigest 990111 regarding current/recent production Baldwin pianos. Morbid curiosity drives me to inquire whether or not the Baldwin Hamilton that we bought new 10 years ago (5/88, S/N 243HP416774) falls subject to the short cuts described. The piano wa...

•A minor correction -- I think Bruno Hoffman also plays the "cups". I have the original VOX record album, from way back in the 1960s, and while the cover sports a nice engraving of Benjamin Franklin with his rotating nest of saucers, the inner photo shows Mr. Hoffman with his instrument, a table wit...

•Just a curious question regarding the power of the Boyd Pistonola player, and to suggest that playing a piano isn't just a matter of force at the key but also "impulse," if we did a little simple figuring we can guess that its note pistons couldn't be any larger than 1/2" diameter and probably less...