Harvey Chao wrote in 981231 MMDigest, and Jody commented:

> I was a Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco yesterday, and paused at
> the San Francisco Music Box Shop's window to see what they offered.
> One item was a Reuge music box with 4 interchangeable cylinders, each
> cylinder perhaps 1-1/8 inches in diameter and perhaps 5 or 6 inches long.
> The mechanism was installed in an inlaid gloss finished box with a
> drawer that stored the spare cylinders.  The price was $5150.00 or
> something quite close to that.  Was that a typical/fair price or was
> it inflated for tourists?
>
>[ I spent a frustrating half hour in the same store last spring
>[ trying to get the sales clerk to be quiet long enough that I could
>[ listen to one tune from beginning to end without distraction.  The
>[ sales clerk kept trying to tell me how "beautiful" the box was.  I
>[ finally had to sternly ask her to be quiet.  It seemed hard for
>[ her to understand that a potential buyer might want to _listen_
>[ carefully to an instrument as part of the evaluation process...
>[  -- Jody

That is the list price for that box, but you can often get it cheaper:
if you join their club you can get a 25% discount during your birth
month.  Also, a lot of San Francisco Music Box Shop (SFMB) stores are
no longer carrying that item (part of their "Heritage Collection") and
so have an additional 20% clearance discount.  That's how I got mine,
the discounts did add together.

Since SFMB is discontinuing the entire Heritage Collection except for
the 4-1/2" Reuge/Thorens disk box, all of the changeable movements
_should_ have the 20% discount on them.  If they don't, call around
and find someone else.

 * However!!!

I left in the bit from Jody to underline an important point: the store
I bought my box from had six of them in stock -- and since they were in
a mall and it was therefore extremely noisy, it was a real chore to
hear the box properly before buying it -- but I had to listen to _all
six boxes_ before I found one with the dampers adjusted properly.
_Every_ other box had grunts, chirps, and the occasional odd squeak
mixed into the music if you listened closely enough.

And it did not take a trained ear to catch them: even the salesgirl
realized something was amiss when I pointed it out to her and made her
compare it with another 72-note non-changeable movement (basically the
same movement except for the clutch mechanism).  She, of course,
pointed out that SFMB are guaranteed for life -- and while they _do_
honor that, they cannot replace Heritage Collection boxes from stock,
they must be sent for repair, a process that can take months and still
may not be done properly -- hardly the kind of thing one wants to deal
with on a brand new box.

Reuge's quality control is the absolute pits because they have
discovered how few people really care about these details.  Most people
who come to listen to my collection never seem to notice any difference
between the restored boxes and the unrestored ones until I can point it
out to them!

Moral: be extremely careful about buying the larger Reuge movements,
listen to them _thoroughly_ before buying, even if you have to stick
your ear in the box in a mall...

Oh, yes, and one other thing: these are _changable_ boxes, not
_inter_-changeable boxes.  While I was trying to deal with above
situation at a couple points I put cylinders into different boxes and
they sounded _ghastly_ on any box but the one they came with.  Each
obviously got some hand-tuning somewhere along the way.

regards,

Larry Smith

 [ In Das Mechanische Musikinstrument for Dec. 98, the general manager
 [ of Reuge SA, Stefan Mueller, notes that the Swiss firms (including
 [ also Gueissaz SA and Map SA) are now the only music box makers
 [ producing some high-end models, including 'chalets'.  Mueller doesn't
 [ discuss quality control in this short article.  -- Robbie