Category Archives: Music Box

Reuge 36 tone music box

Music Box,

I found this new music box on ricardo, a local auction platform in Switerland. It’s built by a hobbyist, but uses a Reuge mechanic. It’s a nice wooden box, music stops automatically when both songs are finished. It features 2 Strauss songs, each about 15 seconds.

Listen to songs. (mp3)

These boxes sell for about half to price of an official Reuge box, so quite a bargain. Check out the current listings.

Christmas Music Box with animation

We found this music box in a local antique shop. It’s marked “© Matrix Industries – Made in China”. In the front it says “Family Christmas”. I have no idea where this is from, or how old it is. It features a mechanical music box that also animates 4 figures. If someone has any idea where this could come from, please contact me.

Update: this is a Enesco music box from 1993, called “Decorating Christmas Tree” (#50302) – thanks to PageCreations for the tip!

Stüber Kit Barrel Organ

Music Box,

Stüber Orgelbau in Berlin sells a kit for building your own 20 notes barrel organ. I bought such a kit and built the organ over the last couple of months.

If you’re experienced with working on any kind of wood project (e.g. models or furniture) building should be fairly easy and strait forward. The instructions are sufficient, maybe a few more diagrams would be helpful.

The sound of the organ is quite good, thanks to the two different kind of flutes, the wooden flutes inside and in the bottom, and the metal flutes visible. I’ve uploaded a sample movie on my youtube account.

Update on Cuendet Music Box

Music Box,

I finished restoring the feathers beneath the comb. It still sounds a bit funny, but at this point I could only replace to comb to improve the sound quality. We also cleaned up and polished the body – it now also looks quite nice! What I still don’t know, how old the music box is. If anybody as any idea please contact me!

I’ve posted a video on Youtube with all three songs. (Weggiserlied, Nach Regen scheint Sonne, Schweizerländler).

Mechanical Music Boxes

Music Box, ,

I’ve started collecting mechanical music boxes. Not the simple ones found in toys from china, but the more sophisticated music boxes, mostly made in Switzerland.

You can find a lot of old and new music boxes on eBay and other action sites (e.g. Ricardo in Switzerland) but it’s hard to tell what shape they’re in. Sometimes, a squiking noise can just mean a drop of oil, but it could also mean broken dampers, which is a huge deal to fix!

I recently bought an old Cuendet music box on Ricardo which sounded very strange, caused by broken dampers.

Simple dampers are usually just chicken feathers glued beneath the lower tones. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix that! I’ll post an updated and a sound sample when I’m successful!

I also searched a lot on Google for information and tips on old music boxes, but I haven’t found that much. If you have any good information/links to sites, please send them to me or post a comment to this article.

Music Box Links