From my experience I will also state that indeed Arno was capable and
willing to go, in musical box restoration terms, where many others
feared to tread.

One of the first, and last, impulse eBay items my wife and I purchased
three years ago was a Lochmann 15.5" disc box from Germany, which on
eBay looked very good, and came with a large quantity of discs, and had
a reasonable price.  Unfortunately when it arrived it became very clear
that it was actually missing several star wheels, others were bent and
misshapen, while two teeth, one bass and one treble, were also missing,
something which because of their end position had not been clear on the
photos.  The worst part though was that the dampers had completely
rusted through and fallen apart.

We approached one or two UK restorers about this and, to cut a long
story short, no-one wished to restore the box, mainly because it would
involve creating new dampers, an expensive and tedious task.  With the
star wheels also being, well, Lochmann, this further added to the
reluctance and refusal "to operate on the patient".  We could
hardly blame them, and they didn't want to land us with a huge bill,
in any case, so the advice was to sell it on for what we could get.

Not being easily deterred however, I decided, with my familial Dutch
connections, to contact Arno and take the box to his workshop in Lisse
- a journey which we made, out and back, from Kent, in one day,
involving about 14 hours of driving and 2 hours on a ferry.

Without much hesitation at all, Arno agreed to restore the box, gave us
a quote which we found exceptionally agreeable and would potentially
leave us not far from break even should we sell it again, and
furthermore agreed to give us at no extra charge, all the extra dampers
that would inevitably be fabricated from the large metal sheet used.

Within just a couple of months he had completely restored the box, and
to make things even easier, brought it along to the Great Dorset Steam
Fair in 2010 where he demonstrated it to us outside his camper van,
much to the enjoyment of nearby campers.  Payment was duly settled over
a drink and we met up again during that week, greatly enjoying his
company.

Those who did visit his workshop and found Arno with some time to spare
were in for a treat, as he had some wonderful musical machines dotted
around, and one or two very ambitious projects on the go.

I have never been a great fan of the 19-5/8" size Polyphons, or 
their arrangements, and I have him to thank for playing us a beautiful
sounding upright machine, still with an original dealers transfer on
the glass door of a shop that once existed in one of The Netherlands's
cities, which proved beyond any doubt that these boxes are actually
very capable of sounding marvellous.  We promised him we would come
back one day armed with buckets of cash to relieve him of that musical
instrument, but circumstances changed and sadly that was never to be.

I am certain he will be sorely missed by all who knew him and had
dealings with him, and it is saddening to think of all those
instruments that may now never get restored.

Nicholas Newble