Coin Slot Magazine - #071 - 1981 - January [International Arcade Museum]
Art Reblitz's
The Engelhardt Banjorchestra
Ask an old-timer if he remembers seeing any music
machines in years long gone by, and chances are the
answer will be something like "Oh yes - I remember the
one down at Joe's Bar. It had a piano, drums, violins, and it
even had a banjo. It was a great big thing, and they got it
from someplace over in Germany. They added an electric
motor to it, but I don't know how it ran before they had
electricity."
Answers like this are attributable to people who have an
imagination which is more vivid than their memory. When
the machine at Joe's place is finally tracked down, it
generally turns out to be a Seeburg A roll piano or Mills
Violano-Virtuoso.
There actually was, however, a machine which con
tained piano, banjo and drums, and this is the subject of
the first in our series of "Most Wanted Music Machines."
The accompanying
description and
illustrations,
reproduced from Harvey Roehi's Music Boxes and Player
Pianos, are for a machine which actually existed. Not one
example is known to survive today, but an empty case for
one was turned up a few years ago, and the stained glass
front for another example is in a California collection. Two
varieties of case style are pictured in existing literature: the
one illustrated here, sold by Connorized, and another,
sold by Engelhardt, some of which have a stained glass
panel in the front, with sections of clear glass enabling the
banjo fingers and other mechanisms to be viewed.
The Banjorchestra contained an automatic banjo with
four strings, four pickers and ten fingers per string, a 44-
note piano, a triangle (at the lower left hand corner of the
front window), a snare drum (at the upper left), a
tambourine (to the right of the banjo), castanets (describ
ed as Chinese wood drum, or wood block, in another
advertisement, and located under the tambourine), and
bass drum (or tympani) effect. Since no bass drum is
visible anywhere in the cabinet, the effect was presumably
obtained by having a bass drum beater strike the snare
drum or tambourine. (One rare coin piano, encountered
by collector Roger Cregg and manufactured by the
Automatic Orchestra Co. of Detroit, M ichigan, had its bass
drum effect made by the beater striking the soundboard of
the piano!)
In existing photos, the banjo appears to be identical to
the Encore Automatic Banjo, for which a very detailed
history appears in Dave Bowers' Encyclopedia of
Automatic Musical Instruments, along with pictures and
descriptions of other styles of the Banjorchestra. The
piano was mounted in the rear of the cabinet on hinges, so
it could be swung out for tuning and servicing, and for
access to the vacuum pump, stack and other mechanical
components. The case pictured here stood an imposing
6'7" high, while the case style with the stained glass front
was apparently identical to the Englehardt model F
cabinet, used for various styles of coin pianos with or
without pipes, xylophone or bells, which stood only 5'91/2"
high. With the piano swung open, the stack remained in
the cabinet,
probably making accurate regulation
between the stack and the piano action rather difficult.
Harvey Roehl recently interviewed a number of long
time residents of St. Johnsville NY, where the Engelhardt
factory was located. To each old-timer, Harvey showed a
picture of the Banjorchestra, but not one of them clearly
remembered anything about it.
The heyday of the Encore banjo was right after the turn
of the century. As noted in Bowers' Encyclopedia, used
Encores were selling for as little as $25 apiece by 1916. In
1915, the Engelhardt Piano Company apparently went
bankrupt and was reorganized on a much smaller scale
(although there are no records of a bankruptcy under any
of Engelhardt's business names in the U.S. District Court
in Utica). With the Banjorchestra first advertised in trade
journals in 1915, it would seem that the whole idea was to
sell something "new" made of outdated Encore Banjos.
With a good music roll, and with the banjo in perfect
tune and regulation, an Encore iscapableof sounding just
like an excellent human banjo player. It is beautiful to look
at, with the banjo surrounded by plate glass windows and
doors, making it one of the most sought after music
machines. Music rolls were made by the American
Automusic Company, which was owned primarily by W.
Scott O'Connor of the Connorized Music Cmpany. As
stated in the present advertisement, Banjorchestra music
rolls were also produced by the Connorized Music Co., so
there is a good probability that Banjorchestra music was
also excellent. However, the skin banjo heads in use
during the time of its production were prone to wide
extremes of tension variation whenever the humidity
changed, causing unstable tuning. A severe problem for
the Encore, it was probably just too much for the
Banjorchestra with the banjo
playing off in left field, musical
ly, in relation to the piano ac
companist. Today, one of these
instruments
fitted
with
a
modern
plastic banjo head
would not change its tuning
with humidity changes, making
it a much more practical instru
ment, so if one is ever found,
* ,
there is a good chance that it
_
will actually prove to be an
"Automatic Marvel of Its Age."
on the piano. Each string was then tuned to the piano note
by ear. The drums and traps could be cut off by a series of
>
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The Automatic Marvel of the Age
The
BANJORCHESTRA
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THE USE OF THE BANJORCHESTRA
MUSIC
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WHAT
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REGULATION
ROLLS
COMPRISES
MERCHANTS
The CONNORIZED MUSIC CO. ^^vork1"1"
buttons.
JANUARY, 1981
© The International Arcade Museum
THE COIN SLOT — 19
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