The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I received a call and was asked to repair their phonograph. This is what I found. What is it? Can someone provide a name of someone that might be willing to share some expertise with me? Thanks, Jerry Blais

Have you checked with AMICA (Automated Musical Instrument Collectors Assn). This seems right up their alley.

European, I'd say 20th C. This technology hung on even into the era of pneumatic instruments with rolls and books. You'd find them in places with little or no electricity. There were still people who'd pin the latest tunes onto barrels into the 50's.

I knew a place (restaurant) that had one of these machines in it's waiting area / lobby, 20 odd years ago. You dropped some coins in it and it'd play you a song.

It was neat, drums and woodblocks and everything going. IIRC, it also had a guitar-ish thing in it that plucked or strummed the strings.

Definitely a piano-orchestrion: these were very popular in European cafés up into the 20th century....

It definetely is not a phonograph! It's an orchestrion

Here's a very similar one in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2dXPaYRhB8

A neat machine. These go back to at least the 18th century, although this one I'm guessing is most likely 19th century. The ones with the pinned barrels are usually fairly early. Later Victorian era machines mostly used a train of punched cards or punched paper rolls. (Hugely easier to change the tunes it plays that way.) There are some folks around the country who specialize in restoring them. The biggest US groups that collect these are AMICA, as mentioned earlier in this thread, and MBSI (Musical Box Society International). If you can find the name of the maker somewhere on the machine, you might be able to find info about them in Q. David Bowers "Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments," something of the "Bible" of mechanical music.

Clay

The company name was "AUTOMATIC PIANO PARIS", they were in business in Paris until 1913, and as the company name indicates, they made automatic piano's and piano-orchestrions.

Thanks, I have a name and phone number so I have a starting place. Jerry Blais