File talk:Baud museum mg 8461.jpg

Hello everyone.

Just my humble opinion:

Although it is true that many people have used "musical box" to define a wide variety of self-playing musical instruments (indeed, the Musical Box Society International, or MBSI, uses this popular propensity as an excuse to include many diverse instruments in their interests), I think it is more appropriate that this article make brief mention of this at the end, and give LINKS rather than posting entire IMAGES (of, respectively, a Hupfeld Phonoliszt-Violina automatic violin player, and a Gavioli fairground organ).

By the way, I do believe that the organ in this photo, located at Musee Baud, L'Auberson, Switzerland, is actually a Gavioli organ and not a Gebruder Bruder organ, despite the name painted on the front. The pipework and facade, in my opinion, display none of the characteristics of Gebruder Bruder (a typical Waldkirch, Germany fairground organ maker), and all of those of Gavioli (the pre-eminent Paris, France fairground organ makers). I have no idea why there is this obvious disparity, and it is a discussion more suited to the iMOD forums (independent Mechanical Organ Discussions) than here.

Regardless, I think this is an excellent, although misleading, photo and should be moved to the "fairground organ" page here in Wikipedia, rather than present on the "music box" (or, more properly, "musical box") page.

One thing is for sure. This instrument is absolutely NOT an orchestrion. In his landmark book, "Mechanical Musical Instruments", Alexander Buchner does lump all non-comb-type self-playing instruments combining two or more types of instruments (for example, wind instruments and percussion) together as "orchestrions". In fact, he even includes an early photo of the 89-key Gavioli fairground organ "King Carnival" as an illustration(!)

However, since Buchner's early book, subsequent authors, restorers, historians, and experts have refined the definition of "orchestrion" into something more exact. One can look up the debate here:

http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/KWIC/O/orchestrion.html

(but especially, articles from December 15, 2003 through December 24, 2003 are most relevant here).

Please see also my article "what is an orchestrion?" which I will post on the Wikipedia talk page for "orchestrion" shortly after posting this.

If you absolutely must have a photo of an orchestrion for the music box page, then I suggest finding a photo of something that is definitely agreed by everyone as an orchestrion, such as a Seeburg H, a Hupfeld Helios, Popper Luna, etc. etc.

sincerely, Andrew Barrett