Hello, All,  I would like to thank everyone who responded to my recent
post regarding the manufacture of new musical box discs.  Perhaps it
would be advantageous to explain my reasons for wanting to produce
modern discs and my choice of the 39 cm size.

First, for the many that are unfamiliar with me and my work, I should
like to say that I have worked as a clockmaker and musical instrument
restorer, specifically automatic musical instruments and musical boxes
for nearly thirty years.  In that time, I have also arranged music for
almost every conceivable format, from books, paper rolls, discs, cobs
and cylinders.

I have also been a musician in my free time and am adept at playing
many musical instruments, especially the Steirische Harmonika and
piano.  In addition to this experience, I have also arranged for
orchestras and bands.  I am also a cat person, but tolerate dogs, only
drink beer from Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom and, much to
my wife's dismay, flirt with young ladies that are much younger than I.

The first real musical box that I ever heard was one that I was called
upon to repair when I was 17, a Regina 27" model.  I thought upon
hearing this contrivance that surely it was a very close approximation
of the voices of God's angels in heaven.  That first song I heard was
"Society Bear" by Irving Berlin, I believe.  Eventually I obtained a
20-3/4" Regina, and because of a dire shortage of discs began to make
some for myself.

Eventually I procured a 15-1/2" (39 cm) Regina and had no obstacles to
purchasing discs for it.  The 39 cm Regina, with its variety of discs,
provided a real education for me as to how various arrangements were
constructed.  With the addition of German Polyphon discs, I noticed
similar patterns in what some call "decorations" and I term "flourishes".
If the proper song is chosen and the pattern strictly followed, then
the resulting arrangement is nothing less than stupendous.  During this
time, and before I was 21, I produced some 20 20-3/4" discs and about
40 15-1/2" discs; some better than others, but all stellar.

I have chosen 39 cm because it is the most common disc size, sounds
extraordinarily good, can play on a variety of antique machines, new
boxes are made today by several manufacturers in that size, and it is
also shipping-friendly.

I am now going to state my reasons for wanting to make these discs and
am certain that I am going to wind-up in quite a few people's Hell's
Kitchen because of what I am going to say here.  I should like to
all-out state that, barring a very fortunate accident, I don't expect
that making musical box discs will even begin to pay my beer bill.

So why make them at all?  The answer lies in my love of this seemingly
simple instrument.

Presently we have a plethora of new discs that embody, both in their
choice of tunes and in the mediocrity of their arrangements, all that
the grand musical box is not: a novelty, high-dollar fun machine.

I wonder at those who pay obscenely high prices for newly manufactured
boxes only to play 1950s rock-n-roll classics on them; I have similarly
cringed when a well-meaning but musically ignorant young couple showed
me their beautifully restored 15-1/2" Regina changer and the first disc
played to me is "Rainbow Connection", followed by other questionable
musical box tune selections and climaxing with the Flintstones' theme;
all badly arranged and badly chosen tunes to arrange anyway for a
musical box.

The task of a musical box arranger is to coax out the angelic voices
from that box, not to indulge the public with whimsy in order to fatten
the pocketbook.

I realize that business is, indeed, business and that there must be a
profit; but at what expense?  Eventually we must wrestle with the truth
of the matter: that the musical boxes' scale and size of disc, for
ultimate arranging, vastly limits the type of tunes that can be
selected for performances.

This dirty bugger has been known all along.  All musical box
manufacturers have known it, some coping with it better than others,
but all for the most part abiding by what is in the trade, and should
be, a natural law.  There are very few badly arranged original discs,
although they exist, no doubt for the same reasons that they do today,
but nowhere near the in such quantity.

Now, from what I am saying, there may be those among you who think that
I love a certain kind of music.  That is not true.  I am very musically
diverse in my tastes, but simply put, you would not issue "Chicago
Monkey Man" or "That Black Snake Moan" on a musical box.  Could it be
done?  Most certainly.  Would it be well arranged and appropriate?  No,
it would not.  Those are simply the cold, hard facts.

If I am successful, and I believe that I will be, I shall have newly
arranged 15-1/2" discs that shall coax forth those angelic voices from
your box... if that is what you want.

Grüß, Karl Schröder
Princeton, Missouri, USA