I recently took my Artizan A-2 to the COAA Painesville, Ohio, rally,
where I was confronted by a gentleman who told me, "That's an Artizan
with a Wurlitzer façade."  Having owned this organ since 1985 and
having restored it twice, I was pretty familiar with its history and
nomenclature.  I also have another unrestored A-2 with an identical
façade, both as pictured on p. 814 of the "Encyclopedia of Automatic
Musical Instruments," by Q. David Bowers.

While trying to convince him he was wrong, I inquired what he based his
information on.  He replied, "I read it under the video on YouTube."  I
checked this out when I went home, and sure enough, there it was.  I
wrote a response to the author of the misinformation.  But after
several rounds of email tag, most of which made little or no sense, I
gave up and deleted.

I looked at some other band organ videos and found this same author,
and two others, had posted comments for various videos, generally with
grammar and spelling errors, but more importantly, full of incorrect
and questionable information.  Checking further, I found that two of
the writers were twelve-year-old boys that had never owned or worked on
a musical machine, while the third based his information mostly on his
own opinions rather than fact.  He advised me that I should join COAA
(where I have been a member since its beginning)and that I should take
my machines to rallies (which I have been doing since 1985).

I am pleased that these young men have taken an interest in mechanical
music machines, and I am sure that I and other owners would be glad to
help them with their questions and machine-related problems.  But I
hope that they will get their facts correct before they publish them on
YouTube, etc., where thousands of people read them and too often accept
them as fact.

If your machine appears on YouTube, I would advise you to check to see
what comments now appear under your video.  I would also like to hear
from MMDers about how such revisionist history should be dealt with and
what a reasonable, gentlemanly response might be.

Jim Welty