Gramophone and Player piano combined!

G'day all

Well its no secret that I'm a player piano fan ,but i did join this forum to broaden my knowledge of Great musical instruments of yesteryear

So today i thought i would share with you on these forums a rarer type of player piano that also had a gramophone built into it as well.
Some of you on here may have already heard or seen one of these before , but for those of you that haven't i have added 2 pictures to show the set up of the system.

To have the combine 2 in one instrument , i guess be the equivalent of a VHS/DVD player in todays terms.

The way it worked was , you played the player piano as per normal and a spring connected to the roll motor would wind up gramophone.Once the roll was finished and was been rewound , the gramophone would then play and you could listen to a record while the player rewound the roll.

You could only use one instrument at a time , and the top half of the piano case acted like a speaker.When not in use the door covering the gramophone would slide shut and it was then concealed away when not in use.

I think it was an amazing feat , but feel i will never see one here in Oz though.
Regards Daniel








Picture 1 From website http://www.pianola.org/factsheets/apollo.cfm
Picture 2 From webite http://www.vintagepianoshop.com/detail.cfm?id=130

WOW! I want one. I've never heard of these before. Probably because as you say, we won't see one out here.

shane wrote:WOW! I want one. I've never heard of these before. Probably because as you say, we won't see one out here.

G'day Shane

Im always keeping my eye out for one , but have yet seen one be advertise here in Oz.If im every lucky enough to track one day , i will let you know for sure.

And just to think.....there is probably someone ,somewhere with one in a back shed with junk all over it and couldnt care less about it.....

Daniel

Reminds me of a machine I saw earlier last year except it was a combination music box (with the large rotating perforated metal discs) and gramophone. Never saw one of those before either and the dealer who had it was asking a substantial five-digit US dollar price for it. Probably an inflated price as most of his cylinder and disc gramophones in his shop were about US$200 over the average.

When you really sit down and think about , just how many different types of instruments were made that were in limited numbers that most people never saw.

A combination of special orders and one off's , would have resulted in fantastic pieces of beautifully made instruments that did more then one thing and stayed with the original owners and family.

My way of thinking now is :
Just because its not on the net ,
not pictured in a book ,
no record of the sound
...dosent mean it never existed.

Daniel.

Very very true Daniel! There's always new "facts" coming to light, in the phono field alone, so who knows whats out there, yet to be discovered. I guess we can thank the internet for a lot of new info, as well as collectors, and even forums like this, where collector's can exchange info. Still, it makes you wonder what may turn up next week, next year, or in 100 yrs. The "HMV 1A" thread here, is a perfect example. Many "experts" have researched and written books, believing the 1A was the ONLY auto-changer the company ever made. 80 yrs later, this one shows up!