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MMD > Archives > April 1997 > 1997.04.10 > 13Prev  Next


Link Electric Player Spoolbox
By Mike Walter

Dear Jody & Friends,  I have just acquired through a friend a mechanism
which is supposed to be a Link player mechanism.  I have my doubts as to
its originality but I will tell you what I can, and maybe get some input
from the group.  It came from a blind gentleman who was planning to
install a pipe organ in a pizza parlor (something which was fashionable
around here a few years ago).  He was told that it was a Link player.

The "Spool Box" looks almost hand crafted.  It has two _large_ spools,
around 10" each, one above and one below a wooden tracker bar with, it
looks like, metal nails sawn off and filed down.  Each nail has an
electrical wire coming out of the back.  In front of the tracker bar,
there is a metal "brush" to complete a circuit when a hole appears in the
roll.

The rolls are large affairs, 12 inches in width, with what looks like
6-to-the-inch perforations.  There are control perforations along at
least one side of the roll.  One roll is on a spool.  Unrolling it finds
numbers every three or four feet, corresponding to selections.  The
highest number that I saw was 15.  There are also arrows along one edge
which appear every so often and say something like "adjust tracking to
hole".  The paper is of green color.

I have no idea if it came from a Link organ, or where.  Supposedly all
Link nickelodeons had endless loops of rolls.  But I also read that
there were a lot of variations that were introduced during their years
of production.  Can anyone shed any light on the subject?  Thanks for
the assistance.

Mike Walter


(Message sent Thu 10 Apr 1997, 02:25:45 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.)

Key Words in Subject:  Electric, Link, Player, Spoolbox

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