Paul Johnson asked for remembrances of Ray Siou [210227 MMD]. As far
as I know I never met Ray. Ray never developed an online profile, and
I never took the time to track down his phone number and call him.
I did, however, benefit from his work.

Documenting and archiving APP rolls, much of my index came from Ray's
catalogs and broad-sheets. From my conversations with Russ Doering and
John Malone, I doubt Ray would have been much interested in questions
regarding Wurlitzer ephemera. Ray left the data in a format for others
to use, which was his real legacy. He made everything possible, then
sat back and enjoyed life.

I was also able to restore Ray's orchestrion for Geoff Hansen. There
is a story that Ray used this instrument to vacuum the chad and dust
off the roll cuts he shipped. I do not doubt it -- the poor thing barely
played. The [green vinyl] aquarium hose had turned to jelly. At least
the pneumatics were covered with leather or pneumatic cloth and not
Perflex.

This orchestrion was built from an Operators piano console with pipe
extensions. I think it was part of the Reproduco instrument family.
It was converted into a 10- or 11-foot high behemoth by Noble Stidham
in Lubbock, Texas.

It was a great piece of furniture, complete with a reproduction "Wonder
Light" made from a Delta or Pfister shower knob covered with bath salt
jewels. A set of Wurlitzer flutes and violins, along with xylophone and
drums, were added in the upper section behind heavy leaded glass doors.
The name plate calls this the "Ray Siou Special".

One of the things we decided to do was to remove the "O" roll frame
and replace it with an AMI MIDI valve stack connected to parts from an
Emutek pipe organ relay. The orchestrion has two roll frames. The other
is a [Wurlitzer] 75-note tracker bar which was configured to play APP
rolls. I connected this to the remains of a Wurlitzer R pipe organ
player electronic switch stack. This allowed paper rolls to still be
played on the orchestrion through the electronic pipe organ relay. The
tracker ports mapped to a phantom keyboard on the relay.

Geoff also has a horseshoe console Reproduco organ, what we call the
Repro-Sucko, which was missing it's rollframe. This was also converted
to use other parts from Emutek pipe organ relay. The Emutek relay was
connected to the AMI valve chest on the "Ray Siou Special". This allowed
the horseshoe console to play the piano. Ventil stops were added to the
stop rail on the Repro-Sucko to switch the ranks on and off and play
the percussion on the "Ray Siou Special".

Since the Wurlitzer 165 band organ and the Wurlitzer Caliola use
the same tracker bar as APP orchestrions, it is now possible to play
Wurlitzer 165 arrangements with automatic stop selection, either from
music roll or recording on the Ray Siou Special. These sound great;
I posted some clips of this to my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUROhBK-OImrz9jZAqvpumg 

It is too bad Ray was not around to enjoy this conversion. From the
stories I have heard, this was the sort of thing Ray enjoyed. Some of
my conversion was also inspired by MMDer Vic Searle [in Japan], who took
to email in later life. Vic sent me his booklet on making a machine that
played Ray's rolls on electronic oscillators. The other person involved
in the conversion was the late Rich Olson, who sadly did not live long
enough to hear it.

I made Rich a duplicate AMI valve chest using pipe organ driver
boards for John Malone's Wurlitzer 165, so that Rich could play his
arrangements on physical pipes. This was a system that went beyond MIDI.
It is based on the jOrgan which Rich introduced me to. Sadly this was
never completed due to Rich's untimely death.

Julie Porter