North Coast Imports, Inc.

Our dealer in Ohio is planning a remarkable Holiday Event! Doctor Rudolf's Magical Musical Clockwork Promenade  will be an Open House with a continuous concert of mechanical music, refreshments, story tellers for children, and fantastic holiday shopping opportunities. In addition to the clockwork marvels always on display at Suburban Clock, we will have exhibits of special and rare antique music boxes, orchestrions, player pianos, organ clocks, and more! Come to Dr. Rudolf's Magical Musical Clockwork Promenade!  at Suburban Clock on November 22-23 for some hot cider, a music box concert, a story, and get your holiday shopping done early. We're sure to have something for everyone on your list! Visit  www.SuburbanClock.com  or the Facebook event page  for more information and directions to our store. Here are a couple videos of newly restored, antique organ clocks that will be on display. These are exceptionally rare and worth the opportunity to se...

I was on the plane yesterday, and had an interesting conversation with the man next to me. He brought up the Kimball Electronics Group  which is a global electronics company which he represented at one time or another. KEG was once Kimball International , which was one of the largest manufacturers of home organs. He remembered a conversation he had with the CEO which described their transition from organs to a giant electronics firm. The CEO said that from the '50s through the '80s every newlywed bought an organ for their home. By the time the '80s came and went into the world of electronics, no younger person was interested in having one in their living room. They were no longer a status symbol. To be sure, I remember them as a kid. Those home organs were everywhere. We used to have a stand at the county fair, selling Grandfather clocks next to those heavy organs thumping out "Oh When the Saints Go Marching In..." in every beat from a rumba to a disco gro...

Dug North has a writeup on the Musical Mystery House in Wiscasset, Maine   It's an old video, but it features some whistling automata like the bird cage, bird box and whistling man that are available through North Coast Imports! Address for the Musical Mystery House: Musical Wonder House 16-18 High Street Wiscasset, ME 04578 Hours: Memorial Day Weekend through Halloween Monday through Saturday, from 10AM - 5PM and Sunday Noon - 5 PM Web site: http://www.musicalwonderhouse.com/

There's a fantastic article in the New York Times about the Morris Museum in New Jersey .  A musicologist draws connections between an 1877 Swiss music box there with Puccini's Madam Butterfly. Even now few visitors spend much time in the room where the Swiss music boxes are displayed. Yet, being a musicologist, I lingered there alone last January as my children ran ahead. I kept listening to one box in particular, a harmoniphone from around 1877, equipped with a reed organ and able to play six Chinese tunes from a cylinder.   Confused at first, I suddenly realized that I had stumbled on the key to a musicological mystery many decades old. Scholars have long known that Puccini used Chinese tunes in his  opera  “Turandot” (set in China and left incomplete on Puccini’s death in 1924). But they have been puzzled by the origins of two “Japanese” tunes in his “Madama Butterfly” (set in Japan and first performed in 1904). What I had found were Chinese sour...

Here's a great video from the VdS (Black Forest Clock Association) These are advance techniques for adjusting and fine-tuning your music box mechanism. Please be sure to pay careful attention to the video when making any adjustments, and remember that ALL of these adjustments should be VERY VERY small. All wire-bending and tweaking should be done a hair's width at a time. Be careful not to force anything or to bend anything too far.

The Badisches Landmuseum at Karlsruhe has an excellent website where you can listen to some exceptionally rare and fascinating mechanical musical instruments and musical clocks. Here you can listen to a Musical cabinet by the Veith-Langenbucher company, Augsburg, circa 1620... or an Elephant Clock, c. 1760, Clock case: Antoine Foullet, Mechanism: Tibeauville-Lamy... or an Apollo Clock, c. 1780... or a Chest with Flute Mechanism, c. 1804, Davrainville workshop, Paris. The website has this to say about the Musical Chest: After Napoleon was crowned Emperor he is said to have commissioned this model and given it to the Duchess of Bordeaux. The metal pin roller, also known asa cob, has eight melodies by Joseph Haydn which he specifically composed for this mechanical instrument. I wish there were better pictures available to post, but the sound files are definitely worth checking out!

A few days ago, my Twitter followers may be been slightly mystified by my Tweets about finding hidden treasures in Baltimore. I had the inestimable pleasure of seeing a private collection of clocks, mechanical musical instruments, old fans, lamps, and more... all very rare and very interesting. The tower clock collection was particularly impressive. The house was fitted with several tower clock dials on the outside. I've gone down that street many years and never looked up to notice them. There is even a dragon outside that strikes a bell with his tail. On the inside, there were some large tower clock movements (like the one pictured above) with slots cut in the floor below them so that the pendulum could swing in the room below. I did a reblog post a few weeks ago from a Steampunk site about old tower clock towers being converted into apartments - but those places didn't have clocks in them. There were several tower clocks, most with 3-legged gravity escapements . The wh...

... or mechanical noises anyway. This is a fascinating table of homebrew fun! Dirigenten & Den mekaniska orkestern from Erik Nilsson on Vimeo . [via Deviant Synth ]

We are proud to introduce a new musical cuckoo clock. This charming Chalet has fresh lines and colors. The chimneysweep hopps in and out of his chimney - startled by the cuckoo call. There is also a music box that plays, and the waterwheel turns. Fans of North Coast Imports already know about the charming version without music (the 1216 ) now we are pleased to announce that we can offer a larger version with music too! (see model number 1316 )

Below you can watch a movie ( visit our YouTube channel! ) with a cuckoo music box functioning properly. Sometimes minor adjustments need to be made to the two arms connecting the clock mechanism to the music mechanism. As you watch the video, pay attention to the two black arms that reach in from the left side. One on top and one in the middle (touching the spinning fan-fly or governor). In the first part of the video you see one cuckoo call and music right away. The second part shows how the music mechanism is first started by the cuckoo mechanism, held while the cuckoo calls, and then released to allow it to play. The thicker, black metal arm on top unlatches the music drum and the music mechanism so that the drum starts to turn. It is abruptly stopped however by the second, thinner wire that touches the brass fan-fly. This stopping wire remains in place until the cuckoo bird has finished its call. If this second wire didn't stop the fan-fly from spinning, the music would play ...