I spent many happy days in my youth visiting Hathaway & Bowers, Inc.,
when they were in Santa Fe Springs, Calif.  -- and hearing first hand
about every style of music machine known.  I purchased my first coin
piano from them in 1969: a Seeburg KT converted to play "A" rolls (it
was restored by me back to a KT a few years later).  I sold it at the
height of the market in 1976.

Yes, I remember Vic Reina, Bonnie Tekstra and Noel Burndahl when he
later worked at American International Galleries in Orange County.
It was there that I nearly bought the only class III/42 Hupfeld, having
most of its missing parts from a purchase years earlier.  The huge
library of German music didn't justify going into debt for it, in my
opinion, having gotten into these instruments from the enjoyment of
popular American music of the period.

I also remember hearing the huge Imhof & Muckle "Admiral" orchestrion
and was disappointed in how softly it played for its size -- hey, I was
just 20 years old at the time!

And the day the late Jack Nethercutt strolled through Hathaway & Bowers,
buying orchestrions like most of us buy shirts!  Those were truly the
"good old days" of the hobby!  We thought they would never end...

Stephen Kent Goodman