-- forwarded message, please reply to sender and MMD --

Hi, Everybody!  About three years ago I purchased a rare Peter Stachl
self-playing accordion through a local auction house.  It plays a
20-note crank-organ music roll on a tiny spool, one tune per spool,
and the roll is driven by a rather hard-to-wind spring.  The music
roll is situated inside the bellows, above the main reed blocks; the
bellows chamber is opened on four little hinges to change the roll.

The accordion is not push-pull -- that is, it plays the same note
both ways (which is why it uses two rows of buttons to play the twenty
notes).  It has been suggested more than once that this instrument was
made as a novelty for some special occasion.

It was in pitiful shape when I received it.  I went to someone who is
well respected in the area of automatic musical instrument restoration
and it was butchered while I unhappily handed over $3000.00 to the
hangman.  The reeds were scraped the wrong way and plastic leathers
were used as well as a synthetic gasket.  It turned out to be "Nightmare
On Accordion Street" -- even the roll frame was bent by the perpetrator,
who then unwisely snapped it and then soldered it instead of welded it.

I was perusing the web tonight in search of Peter Stachl and came upon
a web site called "Stachlland" (http://maxlliebermann.bravehost.com/)
that mentioned a fully restored 1968 Peter Stachl Edelweiss Modell
restored by Karl Schroder and Shayla Cridlebaugh of Missouri.  I promptly
Yahooed them and found Schroder's email, <ilovemizzourah@yahoo.com>,
and ripped one off to him.  He has offered to redo my self-playing
Stachl and was a wealth of knowledge about reeds and accordions and
almost everything having to due with automatic music.

Shayla Cridlebaugh works with him from time to time and apparently also
has a real knack and the patience for this type of work.  His address is

  Karl Schroder
  RR1, Box 253
  Princeton, MO 64673 USA
  tel.: 1-660-748-4864

In any event, a team that does this kind of work with such a super
knowledge of what they are doing and with such dedication must be worth
their weight in gold.  I can tell you first hand that people tuning
reeds properly alone in the United States can't number ten and those
with any knowledge of proper reed organ/accordion restorations and
repair are getting rarer everyday.

Thank you,
John Snead
Milwaukee, Wisconsin