I have a Popper orchestrion which is in the middle of restoration. It
is a Konzertist and originally had a top section containing percussion,
xylophone, bells and pipes. That top section is long gone, and I am
having to build new, from the top of the main piano up. The piano
rebuild is nearly finished and might be playing later this month. So
next I will focus on replacing the missing top section. My current
puzzle is what range of notes the supplemental instruments were
designed to play.
From the tracker scales in "The Golden Age of Automatic Musical
Instruments" (a great book by Arthur Reblitz), I have learned the
tracker bar coding and which holes turn the additional instruments on
and off. Further, I learned that it is common for Popper orchestrions
to have 27 treble pipes (violin, piccolo, clarinet, flute), 12 bass
pipes (cello/lower extension of violin), 27-note xylophones, and 15-
note bells.
But what range of piano notes do these additional instruments
correspond to? At what piano notes do the bells start and finish?
What about the pipes and xylophone? I do not know, and would
appreciate any advice or data from anyone who can advise me here.
G. W. Finger
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