Re: Hand-Punched Manivelle
By Mike Knudsen
Back around 1967 I purchased such a machine from Haverhill's, a mail-order adult toy store in San Francisco, for aobut $20, as a gift for my father, who loved music and gadgets as much as I do.
Called the "Melodean" and made in Japan, it was a small psuedo-wooden box that played cardboard music strips about 4' wide and maybe 20" long, though you were encouraged to scotch-tape several together as needed. It used a lever-plucking arrangmement similar to the Libellion on standard music-box teeth, and sounds pretty good.
It came with some pre-punched strips, some blank ones, and a paper punch making smaller holes than a notebook punch. Scale was 20 notes -- three octaves of pure diatonic (white key). No F# or Bb.
Before presenting it at Christmas, I punched up an old Danish dance tune that my dad had tought me to play on the piano as a boy. Good C-F-G three-chord accompnaiment and no "black" notes.
I still have the instrument and most of the cards, but no more blanks. It uses a small motor powered by three 'D' cells to pull the card thru with rubber rollers. It's no short-bedplate Regina but it sounds better ot me than those little Thorens disk players.
It's fun to watch as it sucks the card in one end, puts a U-turn in it inside, and expels the card thru another slot above the intake slot.
I'd been considering writing this up for the MBSI journal. From the postings I've seen, there are several related instruments around. Since the MBSI Journal now has a theme on affordable colectables, we could probably keep it supplied for quite a few issues.
I may post later about a couple of other such items that I've seen and played but unfortunately did not buy.
--Mike Knudsen,
mknudsen@lucent.com |
(Message sent Fri 25 Oct 1996, 16:49:18 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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