•A xylophone is, of course, only made of wood bars. Any such percussion instrument with metal bars is most often known as orchestra bells or Glockenspiel (German for "bells play"). On a theater organ the orchestra bells play at a 2' pitch, as does the Xylophone. The much lower pitch metal bar sound ...

•Please forgive the correction to Mr. Kinsler's note, but there are a couple of mistakes in his posting that could lead to destruction of a musical box comb rather than its repair Let's start out with the basics: If we are talking about a modern musical box mechanism made by Sankyo or Reuge, they ma...

•My Definition of "Orchestrion" Hello all, I have been reading with interest this thread about the definition of the word "orchestrion". I was surprised that few people mentioned the exhaustive definition mentioned in Bowers' Encyclopedia. I do not have my copy handy right now so I cannot give it to...

•I would like to comment on the terms used to describe certain percussion instruments in "Xylophone Problem" in 040525 MMDigest: * A _xylophone_ is a percussion instrument made of wood bars. Its big brother, generally voiced much deeper, is called a _marimba._ * A _glockenspiel_ is a similar type in...

•Jeff Bridges wrote in 040820 MMDigest, "... the metal ones [organ pipes] are made out of (solid?) pewter." Metal organ pipes can be made from many alloys but pewter is not among them. Most metal pipes are pure solder, a mix of tin and lead, called pipe metal. They use various mixture of that. The m...

•Jeff Bridges wrote: >> I was told that they were made of pewter. I hope I didn't sound snippy; I figured you were just repeating what you had heard. >> When I was moving a couple of pipes from the person's home where >> I bought them, with just two fingers one of the pipes would "melt" >> in my fin...

•Friends: As others eloquently have said, any "performance" of a piano roll is only "authentic" if it includes the human being behind the pedals, since the maker of the roll assumed that as a given. Same with classical compositions (except avant-garde tape music and the like). As with any performanc...

•Hi All, In addition to Bruce Clark's "Odd objects ..." I remember going to service and tune the 48-keyless organ we built for the late John Carter that is fitted to the steam yachts. Upon inspection we found several lumps of coal (as expected, as the steam engine is alongside the organ), and a well...

•Hi, I assume the original query applies to a dislodged nipple. I have done a few of these over the years; it's not a task that should be undertaken by anyone who has little or no soldering experience. However, having said that, this is how I tackled the problem of a broken nipple from the middle of...

•[ I asked Mark to tell us more about the guitar microphone that [ he used successfully. -- Robbie Hi Robbie, I am going back to the early 1980s when we tried the guitar mic for recording discs. This was initially a suggestion to me by Bob Minney (see "The Disc Musical Box Handbook", by Graham Webb...

•Hello All, It has been almost 15 years since I started to read articles in the MMD. Over the years various members have discussed hundreds of topics, some of general interest and some of interest to a small group of members. I have asked many questions when a problem arose and answered a few when I...

•I am just catching up with the MMDigest postings from October and I noticed several regarding the instrument at Ruthmere in Elkhart, Indiana. [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/KWIC/C/choralcelo.html ] I have been fascinated by the Choralcelo for a number of years, having been introduced to it by A...

•Hi, I'm not working into band and fair organs but there is a similar problems with reed pipes in many church organs. The causes are not popcorn but mostly flies, ladybugs looking for places to hibernate in fall, and the occasional bees and other beetles. It is worst if the organ is situated right u...

•John, yes, the Wurlitzer 105 is tuned a whole step flatter than what is written on the pipe scale. The starting bass note "G" is tuned to "F", and so on up the scale. Whether you tune to A=440 or A=435 is not really that important. The whole instrument being in tune to itself is important. The limi...

•Hi MMDers, Have any of you restored a Chrysoglott? I have a two-piece English unit with 24 notes on unit A and 25 notes on unit B. I am interested in the width of the pneumatic material covering for the primary motors. I have guesstimated that it is around 1-5/16ths of an inch. The motor boards app...

Stephen Bicknell, intrepid author of the new book History of the English Pipe Organ, published by Cambridge University Press, elaborates on a a PIPORG-L thread following the (almost) word "orchestrian". He would be delighted to have you copy your comments to him: Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 20:52:15 +0000...

•[ Editor's Note: [ [ The following message was oroginally posted on the Pipe Organ [ Listserver by Tom Blackwell. It was forwarded to us by Tim RIckman. [ [> Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 16:03:17 -0700 [> From: Tom Blackwell [> [> Hello piporg-l: [> [> Jim Williams of Ogden, Utah would like to sell his li...

•It is with some trepidation I'd like to introduce myself to such an experienced and knowledgeable group as this, but I'll try nonetheless, as there's a pressing question I'd like to put out to the group. To start at the beginning, I was born within walking distance of the Brentford Musical Museum, ...

•[ Ref. Paul Bellamy in 161002 MMDigest ] Much has been said about the differing tuning scales for the 24.5" Polyphon and I feel the scale printed in Graham Webb's book, The Disc Musical Box Handbook, is probably pretty close to, for sake of argument at this point, the standard 24.5" Polyphon scale ...

•My Gasparini trumpet organ was missing one trumpet resonator, so I consulted the WWW and various music industry publications. Few brass instrument shops want to take on this type of work, it seems, but I finally found Kanstul Music near Anaheim, California (recommended by a shop in England via the ...