We have two reproducing pianos. One, a rare, top loading," baby Ampico" upright and a very nice , fully restored Knabe Ampico grand in a "William and Mary " style walnut case.

One frequent question we get is "what is a reproducing piano?" The reproducing piano "reproduces" very closely the playing of the artist who recorded the roll. It does this by varying the vacuum levels in identical expression controls one in the bass tonal area an one in the treble. The more vacuum, the louder the piano plays. The holes in the edges of the roll made for that player system cause the piano to play crash chords that can rattle window panes or to play the softest of trills. This very closely approximating what artists like Gershwin, Rachmaninov and others played when they recorded the rolls years ago.

The Wurlitzer Military Band Organ Style 125 was used mainly in amusement parks for carousels, or for skating rinks.

The band organ is one of the few machines made for commercial use that are still being used for what they were intended for.
Band organs are voiced very loudly for outdoor use so as to be heard over the noise of carousel machinery and the screams of delighted children. It's 101 pipes are a bit overpowering inside, even in the large room it is housed in in Bayernhof.

Some people call these calliopes but there is a difference between a calliope and a band organ. The calliope, steam or usually air operated has loudly voiced ,single toned whistles of only one voice, that of a flute. The band organ has organ pipes of many voices. This organ has pipes producing the voices of trumpets, violins, flutes, flageolets and picollos. In addition it has percussion in the form of a bass drum, snare drum and top mounted cymbal. It weighs close to 800 pounds.

Wurlitzer made band organs in several sizes, the larger ones may have trombone and saxophone pipes, bells, castanets, and crash cymbals as well as a larger number of pipes.

Disc music boxes are represented in our collection by both foreign and domestic manufacturers, such as Kalliope, Symphonia, Mira, Stella, the famous Regina and others.

We have several examples of music boxes played by pinned cylinders. Most cylinder boxes are pinned for anywhere from 5 to 8 songs or more. A selector lever inside the case allows the cylinder to shift horizontally by a fraction of an inch to bring the pins of a new song in line with it's musical comb. One box in our collection even has a number of interchangeable cylinders allowing for a small library of songs for that particular box. Another, called an Orchestra box, has drums, a wood block, and an organ.