•For sale: Hofbauer 26er street/monkey organ. Currently located in Alberta, Canada. In good working condition, has been tuned and recently overhauled. Works from mains only but battery connections are there. Comes with factory carriage, wheels and strap. Ten music cartridges are part of the deal. I ...

•If changing pulleys does not get the job done, you can get a small inverter or UPS [uninterruptable power supply] of adequate capacity for the desired frequency, and substitute a 12- or 24-volt DC power supply for the battery (sized as required). The inverter will probably be cheaper, as it does no...

•Lighting plants for farms used a bank of lead-acid storage cells that produced 32 volts DC. This battery was charged when necessary by a small gasoline engine. It was a popular arrangement, and lots of electric appliances -- 32-volt refrigerators, light bulbs and vacuum cleaners are listed in my ol...

•I was asked to sell a 20-key Hofbauer "Tanzbär" accordion for a fellow MBSI member. The accordion is in excellent shape but has been un-touched for several years. It plays when plugged into the wall outlet, but I believe the battery is dead. Also, some valves seem to be sticking or not working. Has...

•For sale: 20-note Hofbauer "Tanzbär" player accordion with 38 tunes (3 cassettes), in like-new condition with new battery and carrying case. I'm selling this for a long-time MBSI member. Asking $1700. I posted a video at http://youtu.be/QdIWCQygYUw Phil Jamison West Chester, Pennsylvania tel.: 1-61...

•An addendum to yesterday's post: just as with old piano key weighting leads, once the lead tubing is removed it will probably be welcomed by your local tire store as an addition to the barrel that they toss old tire weights into. Battery recycling companies may take it, also. Gordon Lee Stelter ...

•Hallo MMD, as the conversation in the Yahoo group about e-valves has virtually ended some years ago, I post this here. Today I opened an automatic blood pressure monitor device (BPM) in order to change the battery. One of the components in there is a small magnet valve, which serves to dump the pre...

•Hello Harald M. Mueller, in response to your post on MMD, we have some 30-note movements with motor. We can put on it a little battery, a speed regulator and an on/off button. The price is about 120 euros. The punching of the strip from a MIDI file is not a problem for us. For an artist's show we h...

•I motorized my 20-note organ a few years ago due to shoulder problems. I use a 24-volt skateboard motor running [at 1/2 normal voltage] on a single 12-volt battery. For the large pulley, I was able to get a treadle sewing machine pulley which is just under 12" in diameter. I made a 2" diameter pull...

•I have a plastic bird cage air mechanism (original from factory). It's a really odd arrangement. Maybe they have a small air supply unit to adapt? Hobby shops have a battery unit to hookup to the feed hose. I couldn't get the existing air pump to work -- used wrong materials. What is a good materia...

For several years I operated and maintained 43-key and 52-key air calliopes, made by Tangley and National. The ubiquitous Rootes blower had poor oil seals, and so SAE-30 lube oil was sucked into the air supply and combined with ambient dust. I always had with me a short piece of brass shim stock to ...

Day 4 (and Day Last) of the Convention featured a farewell breakfast at which the annual AMICA Membership meeting was conducted. Among the agenda items were: New International Officers: Linda Bird, President¶ Dan Brown, Vice President¶ Ken Vinen, Corresponding Secretary¶ Roy Powlan, Treasurer (Re-el...

•Gluing in bridge pins with epoxy works esp. if there is play in the pin, or the cap is cracked. Removing the resulting "mound" can be done with a razor blade and dentist pick and eye protection. If the pin is stable enough when the glue is wet, a string (cotton cord) of suitible diameter can be run...

There are many of these constant voltage transformers available surplus. They were very popular for small computers a few years ago, but have (wisely?) been replaced with MOV-only type surge protectors. They should be available very cheaply as compared to the original prices. I know of a 3 KVA, 110/...

•Hello MMDer's -- A while back, Nancy Fratti started a thread going about electroplating small parts. Recently I found some information for some sources for doing this at home using supplies available from the sources listed below. I had originally suggested using electroless nickel thinking that th...

•While attending the Piano Tuning & Repair School, I kept a "piano tuna" in my toolbox. This was actually a small toy flashlight made in the shape of a fish. The bulb was in the fish's mouth, and it lit up when you squeezed it's sides. It was great for peering around in action cavities on grands, an...

•Bob Fitterman asked about removing rust from music box discs. I have used electrolysis to remove rust from old tools, clock parts, and other steel and iron articles. The information came originally from the Old Tools mail list, and is written up in detail by Ted Kinsey at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~al...

•Hello Bob, Your inquiry to MMD reminded me of something. Looking in one of my cabinets I found a box with several... The devices were produced 1965 (in Germany). They are intended to be put into a doll or a cloth hen. Upon pushing a knob, a battery- operated motor starts to turn a record disc. The ...

•I was reading Douglas Henderson's paper, "The 'Piano Roll Style' -- Does it really exist?" from "THE PIANOLA NEWS" (http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/oldnews6.htm). I was crushed to read that Pauline Alpert was actually a man: > Frank Milne (a.k.a. "George Gershwin", "Pauline Alpert" and > "Eddie D...

•Hello, Galen Bird was asking about "a MIDI". If he means a unit which will connect to a computer and output sound from a MIDI program, I can recommend the Yamaha MU-10. This would work off a 12v battery (mine came with an 11.5v fat plug). It does a maximum of 32 notes at once, but some instruments ...