We are currently rebuilding a Pierre Eich Orchestrion, built in Belgium. man, this thing is a beauty!

Unfortunately, it will be some time before I can post a pic of it completed. Just curious, can anyone give me more info. on Pierre Eich? I don't know who he was, but his product is beautiful.

Hi Rich-

I ran an Google search on Pierre Eich and found this website:

Pierre Eich

You are right - beautiful stuff!

Steve,

It is only half done, but I will post a picture. It will be worth the look, believe me.

As promised,here she is - only half finished but well worth the look, isn't she??

Rich:

My "good" china would fit nicely in there, I think, and probably survive the big earthquake that the east may one day get!

Thanks for the pic, proving, once again, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Regards,

Sorry for reviving a "dead" thread (well, I suppose it is the most recent in this particular room), but could someone explain to me what an "orchestrion" or a "nickelodeon" is? Possibly provide a link to a page describing/explaining them?

I didn't even know there were such instruments until just now.

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woo-hoo! Happy 300th!

An Orchestrion has much more than just a piano in it. You can see that inside this huge cabinet is an upright piano, but all that additional space is for other pneumatically driven instruments, which can include drums, xylophone, tambourine, or even brass and woodwind instruments.

A nickelodeon can be just a piano or have other instruments installed with it, but by definition, runs on a nickel, just like a jukebox.

By the way, getting either in "restorable" condition is getting harder and harder these days.

Hope that helps.

Well, not exactly. The song implies that a nickelodeon was a coin-operated musical instrument, but in fact, a nickelodeon was a nickel odeon, a movie theater that cost a nickel to enter. A nickelodeon player, strictly speaking, is a photoplayer, an automatic instrument built to accompany a movie. This is explained in Harvey Roehl's book, Player Piano Treasury. He entitles one of his chapters "The True Nickelodeon Pianos."

It seems the Player Piano Company is still in business in Wichita. They have the best parts and information for players.

BDB,

I bow to your superior knowledge.

and all this time I thought that slot was for a nickel