I respond to Diane H Kay and her inquiry about the metals used in the
manufacture of musical box tune discs.  I'm delighted your family has
inherited and appreciates these outstanding mechanical musical devices.
You are most fortunate, both to have them and to love them.

Now, to the metal substance of music box "tune sheets", which is the
proper terminology.  "Assaying" the sheet metal material, I can think
of four types of discs one will come across.  This does not include the
cardboard discs used for various types of organ devices.

In one -- notably European produced discs -- the steel disc was dyed
with a blue substance.  Perhaps similar to gun bluing?  Most of these
then had information printed on them in gold ink.  This made for a very
attractive, elegant appearance.

There were a few variations: I've seen the blue and gold reversed, with
gold background and blue lettering.  This makes for difficulty reading.
I can recall some were a sort of reddish-maroon.

On many such discs, the title, composer, and type of music were printed
in a circle around the disc, often in several languages, usually three.
Better to accommodate this, at least one producer developed a typeface
in which the letters were shaped like pie-wedges, larger at the top of
the letter than at the bottom.

When one adds fancy Germanic script and the ravages of wear, the
combination often becomes virtually illegible, at least to modern,
non-European readers.  My wife's parents came to the U.S. well before
WW2, and she has recipes written by her mother in old German script.
Sadly, I fear we shall never enjoy those dishes!

The basic Regina discs were steel, polished and then imprinted with the
Regina trademarks and composer/title/number information by a process
similar to a rubber stamp.  If one did not store the discs in a dry
place, they were susceptible to rusting.

By the way, Regina produced discs with other brand names on them,
probably for particular large retailers who wanted their own "record
label", such as Chicago's gigantic Lyon & Healy, which in addition to
retailing everything musical, was the leading American source for
harps.

I have had a few of these "off-label" discs.  In all the cases I have
seen that, for any given popular tune, they used the Regina catalog
number with an additional digit.  They only issued the most popular
sellers, rather than the entire huge Regina catalog.  Although there
may have been others, I have only seen such in the most popular 15-1/2"
size, not the smaller or larger Regina dimensions which ran from 9"
to 27"!

Perhaps some Regina discs, and certainly those issued by other makers,
were zinc.  This oxidizes somewhat like aluminum, the surface turning
into a gray powder.  Unfortunately, the metal itself was not as rigid
as steel.  If leaned up against the side of a shelf or in a box, the
discs would sag and become curved.

This is not to be confused with the permanent "cupping" which discs
assumed when left for a long time in the same position on a machine
with the hold-down bar in place.  This caused a permanent bend in the
disc.  As it rotated to play, the metal would resist the turning of
that bend, and snap into the temporary new shape, just as a steel
barrel-top will "bwong!" when pushed in, and then repeat when pressure
is released and it returns to its normal shape.  While not a big deal,
probably it's a good idea to leave discs with the hold-down up.

I have been involved in recording sessions where this snapping becomes
a major problem.  I was tutored in a method to dampen this annoying
sound while recording, by the late collector George Richard Brown and
his wife Madeleine.  I would stand in front of the machine wearing a
pair of those fuzzy gloves one buys with which to wash one's automobile.
While wearing such mittens dry (we're not washing here, just
dampening!), one "walked" his hands along the surface of the rotating
disc, acting as a set of dampers. This didn't stop the sudden snap in
shape, but it did absorb the sound

Back to the shiny copper discs to which Diane refers.  These are
relatively rare.  Very late in its history, Regina issued such copper
plated steel tune sheets.  All those I have seen have the letter "C"
in front of the catalog number, with very tiny or nonexistent spaces
between the end and start of the tune.  These are "Continuous"
arrangements, intended for dancing.

Diane refers astutely to "bright new penny" discs, an admirable
description.  Pennies are, of course, copper.  Other than the very late
Regina discs, the few other "new penny" colored tune discs are most
likely ones which were copper plated by Melville Clark.  An avid music
box collector and producer of the famed Apollo player pianos, Clark was
the proprietor of a large music-goods store in Syracuse, New York, and
he was into everything musical.  Melville Clark's name is also
perpetuated through Clark nickelodeon rolls.

This copper plating idea was Clark's contribution to keeping the discs
from rusting.  Unfortunately, this obliterated all the imprinted
information.  Clark had the disc number die-stamped into the blank
space before the beginning of the perforations, so he could tell which
disc was which after plating.  He then used some kind of paint-pen to
write in the end space, replacing just the title.  Singularly
unattractive but functional.

The late founder of the Musical Box Society International, Ruth
Bornand, came up with a novel idea some years back when she found a
number of tune discs (I think the ubiquitous Regina 15-1/2") which had
severe surface rust.  When thoroughly cleaned off, it was found the
surface and tynes were not damaged, but the title and other printed
information was lost.  Some titles were obvious simply by playing, but
a number remained unidentifiable.

Ruth's solution was to have the top sides spray-painted in regal gilt
paint, and then promoted as "Golden Mystery Melodies".  For this and so
many other things, Bless you, dear Ruth!  A wonderful, dear friend, and
arguably the one person without whom mechanical music collecting might
not have become so popular, and we might not have this Digest to share
so much.

I have an idea where Mrs. Bornand got the idea for the "Golden Mystery"
discs.  She was obviously acquainted with Melville Clark, who was
fascinated with gilt decoration.  To go along with the copper plating
of his tune sheets, he was fascinated with extraneous gold decoration,
and throughout his collection of machines he had gilding applied
somewhere on each:  on the round feet under the cases, a gold stripe
somewhere, etc.  If you see a music box with some gold extra fanciness,
it's a good bet it was once his.

Years ago I acquired a small Swiss box (I think a Mermod Freres) from
an elderly lady in Connecticut.  Noting its most un-Mermod gold feet,
I opined, "This box belonged some time to Melville Clark".

The lady was stunned.  She said, "How could you know that?  This was
a wedding present to me from Melville Clark!".

It turns out that during the war this music teacher and Clark worked
together on a government program to find ways to increase factory war
production.  Their contribution was a program to define and select
appropriate background music, what younger generations now call
"elevator music" or "dentist music".  With that musical box came
newspaper clippings showing it and others taken by Clark to England
for the delight of the Royal Princesses, one of whom of course is now
the Queen.

In that same New England trip, I purchased a Regina Library Table
(known to us as a desk) which had an unknown quantity of discs stored
therein, but no crank.  Locked and with no key, there was no way to
discern the condition of the mechanism, no way to turn it on, and with
no winding crank it could not be played anyway.  It had been used in
some family's nursery room, and reflected the growth of the clan,
having been painted first pale blue, and then pink!

Delighted, I purchased it "inside-sight-unseen" and loaded it into
the back of my station wagon for the trip home to New Jersey.  At some
point I ran over a bumpy section of pavement, and for the next fifteen
minutes or so was regaled by delightful sounds emanating from this
rare, magnificent Regina, until it finally did run down.  I was able to
have it stripped and completely refinished, complete with a hand-painted
replica of the Regina trademark on the underside of the lid.  It
delighted visitors to Yesteryear Museum for years.

I hope this answers your query about types of metal used in tune discs,
and perhaps adds something to "The Lore and Lure of Music Boxes" (with
apologies to the authors of the book of the same name).

Best wishes to one and all for the holiday season.  Good health and
happiness to everyone.

Lee Munsick