•Hi, If you attended the MBSI convention last week, perhaps you can help me. Since I couldn't attend, I sent an audio demonstration unit to the convention for some people to look at. I built the unit to demonstrate how we could add sound to our museum displays when there is nobody around to play the...

•An acquaintance has a 10-year-old Hofbauer 37-note crank organ that plays from proprietary memory cartridges through its own electronics, which drive electromagnetic valves. Some of the Hofbauer music cartridges are not playing properly, and he would like to expand his repertoire beyond the limits ...

•I read with interest the discussion thread about how player pianos are practically worthless. On the surface that has always been true, except back in the 1950's when some notable people were giving pennies on the dollar for reproducers and orchestras and then generating interest in them through pu...

•Most of the concern regarding lead was the relatively frequent ingestion of lead-bearing paint flakes by infants crawling around in old tenement buildings. That's why lead was removed from paint years ago. So unless you're frequently tearing eighty-eight oxidized lead tubes out of a player, or doin...

•Ever since I was a kid I've always been interested in technology, from video games to cars to records to computers. I was born in the '90s and my brothers and I grew up around ever-changing technologies. Our bible was "The Way Things Work", which described in some detail simple physics and how vari...

•[ Reference Leonardo Forti in 187026 MMDigest ] I have to take exception with Mr. Forti's statement that "If you don't finger any valves, you can't play all the notes on a tuba. You can play only some notes -- those not requiring any fingering." He is correct with regard to the typical human musici...

•[ Harald Mueller wrote in 190210 MMDigest: > Could a 4-minute tune be put on a cylinder music box? I have > arranged Manolis Kalomiris' Nocturne for the 30-note Sankyo > music box movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LFIIZpN5sQ Hi from chilly Rochester, Harald Mueller asked about finding or m...

•Does anyone have any information about the Aeolian Duo-Scope, a collaboration between the Aeolian Company and the Rile-Sloan Company of 122 Fifth Avenue, New York City? I imagine it was short lived, probably dating from the mid 1920s. The idea was that images were projected to synchronise with Duo-...

•There is still more to adjusting a double finger pneumatic tracking system than I was able to tell in the MMD 02.07.27. So I will continue on now. The left finger is the "control finger" of the tracking system because the left edge of the paper is the control edge of the paper. When you see a paper...

•This posting is a bit unstructured. I'm sorry for that, but am a bit frustrated now, since there's seemingly no end to the mail trouble between USA and Europe. It seems that the postal trouble between USA and Norway just continues to increase; this is unfortunately related to all of us who buy and ...

•With the recent activity and interest in the state of the art regarding USB and MIDI, here is some of my experience to share. USB has two modes of operation, Host Mode and Device Mode. Until recently it has been difficult to implement Host mode onto a small processor, and my work has been with the ...

•Because I live in Tasmania, a long way from major industrial centres (and most of the time I couldn't be happier about that), I've taken to making my own roll boxes. I use cardboard about 1.5 to 2 mm. thick. When I go into the local art supplies shop, I ask for "strawboard," and that gets me what I...

•Hello, readers of MMD. During August or September last year, my wife, Beryl, attended a Needlework and Patchwork exhibition in the Derwent Entertainment Centre, a vast white (elephant) erected on the shore of the river that runs through Hobart. It's on the other side of town from us, so it's as muc...