•John Tuttle posted the question about whether we should make use of paper gaskets a standard procedure when rebuilding. Our observations on thin gaskets in glued joints is that it makes disassembly much less destructive. We have found thin leather used in some places, and that is more or less stand...

•We at the DeBence Museum are doing the best we can to accomplish this goal. Each year we offer free tours to school kids with an emphasis on 4th graders. For the past 20 years we have had no problem getting grants to cover the admissions for this purpose. Budgets being what they are for most school...

•Amanda asked about a song her son danced to at House On The Rock. The song is the Ballad of Casey Jones, about a train engineer and a train wreck. If you check Wikipedia they will tell you it was written and performed by the Grateful Dead. Wrong, wrong! It is an American folk song, origin cloudy, p...

•DeBence Museum has been sorting rolls again and I found we have some nice, unused Wurlitzer Style 165 band organ rolls, recut by Mike Grant, and no machine that can play them. They were never played, bought for a customer's machine that is no longer in use. For $80.00 each they can be yours. That p...

•Saw Steve Dean's post in 190330 MMDigest about a Wurlitzer 105 problem. We have a 105 which had, and still has, a similar problem which we have not yet fully resolved. I _hate_ Wurlitzer 4-in-1 valves. Our problem seems to be that, even if a valve tests okay on the bench, it may not pick up or clos...

•Troy Duncan asked about Lloyd G Kelley of Massachusetts. Our records at DeBence Museum show that Lloyd was the final owner of the rights to use the Regina name for music boxes, and in the 1970s he built a number of electric coin slot ones with dancing dolls (we have one). They use the original Regi...

•The DeBence Museum has a Maestro 50-note push-up piano or organ player built in Elbridge, New York. I posted about this about two years ago, as we are missing a lot of parts, and are not even sure what is missing. See https://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/Digests/201709/2017.09.27.05.html I got a reply...

•When Jake DeBence bought this Wurlitzer 153 band organ, he bought it less the façade. Over the past 15 years, with help from many, we have been given or built a reasonable facsimile of an original front. The last missing part was the swell shade assembly, which was given to us a few weeks back. Sin...

•Jasper Sanfilippo passed on Tuesday, January 28 at the age of 88. Ref. https://www.davenportfamily.com/obituary/Jasper-Sanfilippo His collection of mechanical musical instruments is one of the largest in the world and will survive intact through his foundation. See http://www.sanfilippofoundation.o...

•We have just started to install the newly acquired original swell shades on our W 153. The "open" command is on hole #1, we know how to connect that.The cancel is supposedly hole #4. It appears that hole #4 probably cancels other things as well. The question is "what else does hole #4 cancel ?", We...

•This is separate but sort of related to installing swell shades. We have not found a serial number anywhere, so we have not found a serial number anywhere which would let us date the machine. Our W153 does not have 4 in 1 valves, nor does it have individual unit valves. It has a player piano style ...

•Some time back I posted on MMD asking for help with installing a set of swell shades on our Wurlitzer 153 band organ. I want to thank all who responded, and we are now well on the way to getting the job completed. A special thanks to Jack Breen who sent a lot of photos, and Matthew Caulfield who pr...

•We are restoring a Regina Sublima Mandolin Orchestra and, assuming we succeed, we will need a couple of good music rolls for it. The one roll we have is pretty well beat up and patched. I know Mike Lund is hand punching rolls very slowly and expensively. Is there some other source? Scotty Greene - ...

•Well, our Regina Sublima Piano and Mandolin Orchestra coin piano is here now and we are missing: 1) a decent wiring diagram -- we know we are missing parts but we don't know what; 2) a tuning chart; according to the instruction sheet one came with the machine; 3) the scale -- is it tuned chromatica...

•We have found three endless music rolls, 6-5/8 inches wide, in Artizan boxes. One roll appears unused, and is labeled 278; The songs are "Barcarolle", "Stars & Stripes Forever", and "Wedding of the Winds". The other two rolls show some wear, and have no compete song titles, though they seem to have...

•To my chagrin we are tearing apart a non-working Chickering Ampico A grand piano to make room for a functioning one in better cosmetic shape. As of March 25 we are just starting the deconstruction, and if you could use any of the parts this is the time to speak up and we would be happy to send them...

•DeBence Museum has a nickelodeon based on a Lauter piano which was converted by Alan Stafford in about 1980. In tuning it we accidentally disconnected many of the tracker bar tubing connections. It plays an "O" roll. Can anyone give us a tracker bar chart, or better yet, a whole tubing connection c...

•I was saddened to note on MMD 210409 of the passing of Hans Van Oost. We were restoring our 1900 Wellershaus organ about 1995 after professionals had said it was beyond restoration. The organ started life in Germany as a hand-cranked barrel organ but was converted to a keyframe design in Holland in...

•Well, I thought we had been through all our rolls in the roll room, but as I was moving rolls to make some room I found four more Artizan rolls mixed in with the piano rolls. There are three endless rolls, numbers 032, 415 and K87, plus one regular roll, number 49; by "regular" I mean it would play...

•We have a Allan Stafford nickelodeon built about 1990 that we disconnected some of the not usual tubing while tuning. The base piano he used was a 1909 Lauter. We need to find someone with a similar machine who can help us get reconnected properly. (I know it was an serious error not to mark the tu...