A friend of mine asked me to restore a very rare instrument for him,
called "Euphonium".  I was happy to do this difficult job because it
gives me the opportunity to learn more about this more or less unknown
instrument.  I will send two pictures which show how it looks like and
how it is labeled.

The overall size is 400 mm by 400 mm by 250 mm high.  It has a scale of
24 notes (playing 28 reeds).  The music is punched into an exchangeable
brass strip, 110 mm wide and 1195 mm long, soldered to a ring which is
moved around a metallic cylinder on top of the wooden box.

In and onto the wooden box are mounted two pumping bellows and a
magazine bellows, the wind chamber with the 28 brass reeds, the valves
and the mechanism to activate the valves.

On the top of the box is printed "Euphonium, Patent".  Nothing else is
written or printed inside or outside.  Nowhere in the literature
available to me is this Euphonium mentioned.

The only related information we could get comes from La Galleria
Armonica, Museo strumenti musicali di Roma.  That museum owns two
Euphonium "wrecks" in non-playable condition (inventory numbers 490
and 491); they call it "An unknown table crank reed organ".  They know
that their instruments were bought by an Italian collector after 1890,
and they guess that the Euphonium was built by the Euphonika Musikwerke
in Leipzig, Germany, probably because of the similarity of the names.

Questions: Is there anybody who could provide any more information
about the Euphonium?  Who built it?  When?  Where?

Who owns an Euphonium?  Is somewhere in the world such a brass strip
which could fit the Euphonium?  (We only have one, and it was quite a
bit of work to restore it!)

Yesterday I finished the restoration of our Euphonium; now it looks and
it plays excellently!  I hope to get some answers to this posting in
order to include the information hopefully provided into my restoration
report.  When this report will be finished, I will publish it via the
MMD (provided Robbie will accept around 10 pages of text and many many
pictures).

 [ With pleasure!  Send email to <editor@foxtail.com>  -- Robbie

Looking forward to the answers of all Euphonium collectors.

Christian Greinacher, Germany

 [ See the photos at http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/  It resembles a
 [ perforated cookie tin!  Some instruments made by Euphonika Musikwerke
 [ of Leipzig are shown on page 747 of "Encyclopedia of Automatic
 [ Musical Instruments" by Q. David Bowers.  The firm liked Greek names
 [ such as Helikon, Herophon and Manopan.
 [
 [ A related instrument, "Pankalon" model Kalliston organette, brought
 [ 16000 FF at the Chartres auction of 10 December 2000.  See
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/Auctions/Chartres0012/chtr0012FE.html
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/Auctions/Chartres0012/692.jpg
 [
 [ -- Robbie