RAM - Ragtime Automated Music
By Stan Rhine
Someone asked about RAM in the last couple of days. It is Ragtime Automated Music, 4218 Jessup Rd, Ceres, California 95307, phone (209) 667-5525, fax (209) 634-2667. Ken Caulkins is the owner. He has designed a plastic unit pneumatic which snaps onto a 1/2" steel rod (secured with a self-tapping screw). The pneumatics make up into a two deck stack, the steel rods slipping into plastic mounting plates that screw to the cheek blocks.
Caulkins seems to be a very clever designer who has relied on plastic for just about everything you could imagine, from the spoolbox to pipes & pipe valves. He sells kits for converting any piano to an O roll coin piano or orchestrion & a series of "calliopes" & "band organs" which use the pipes & play from O rolls. He recently added reed pipes to the line.
For about $4,000 retail, you can get the complete basic kit, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, cymbal, a set of bells & a coin receiver, or you can purchase all of that stuffed into a piano for about $9,000, depending upon the style & wood of the case.
I was skeptical about such heavy reliance on plastic, but a kit can be installed in a day's time & will churn out quite a satisfactory performance. The spoolbox & drums mount beneath the keybed with bells, pipes & other stuff going upstairs. Doing it that way, they can get by with only minor case modification or none at all.
I have a couple of their kits installed with the spoolbox centered on the music shelf & percussion tucked in on either side. Doing it that way, however, means that the case must be extended to provide the necessary room. It all makes into a pretty nifty little orchestrion.
Hope this provides you with some of the necessary info.
Stan Rhine |
(Message sent Tue 13 Feb 1996, 17:37:51 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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