(Electrotone advertising material courtesy of Glenn Grabinsky.)

Electrotone advertisement from the December 16, 1922, issue of The Billboard. The pictured Electrotone Air Calliope looks like it was made out of an old Pianolin case and refitted with used parts and maybe some new components, and then rechristened as an air calliope. Whether the case was entirely gutted of all Pianolin parts is unknown—there are no known specimens to examine. The visible pipework is entirely different from that originally supplied with the Pianolin, and remains unidentified. The Electrotone Auto Music Company had a long relationship with the North Tonawanda Musical Instrument Works, the makers of the Pianolin, acting as an agent possibly going back as far as 1911. So the company could easily have had many Pianolins in storage as a result of from trade-ins and up-sells.

(Photograph courtesy of Dana Johnson.)

Pianolin 44-note piano with mandolin attachment and a rank of 13 stopped flute pipes for the lower notes and 31 violin pipes for the upper notes. Made by the North Tonawanda Musical Instrument Works, the piano and mandolin attachment are visible through the upper beveled glass window. On the top of the front case extension there is a small window directly over the roll mechanism, which allows patrons to observe the music roll as the instrument plays. Here the Pianolin is positioned similarly to the one shown in the Electrotone Auto Music Company advertisement immediately above. In 1922 an obsolete and unwanted Pianolin, similar in appearance to this example, would have been the starting point for the Electrotone Air Calliope.

(Photograph courtesy of Dana Johnson.)

Interior of the Pianolin. This is what the interior would have looked like before being gutted and transformed into an Electrotone Air Calliope. In the top window the piano action and mandolin attached (directly over the piano hammers) are visible. Atop the music roll bin at left is the endless roll feed mechanism. Behind it is the pneumatic stack, and to its left is a cone and friction wheel type of music tempo or speed control. To the right of the wooden music roll bin is the electric motor, which is belted to the large pulley on a countershaft that is completely hidden by the music roll bin. The small pulley on the countershaft is in turn belted to the large partially visible cast iron pulley attached to the pump crankshaft. The single-lobe, double acting pressure pump is directly below the motor mount, and the two-lobe double acting vacuum pump is fastened to the floor of the instrument and is to the left and partially underneath the music roll bin.

The 13 stopped flutes and 31 violin pipes are at the back of the instrument, with the pipe chest sitting on the floor of the instrument. Only a few of the pipes are visible between the music roll bin and pressure pump. Art Reblitz, an expert in the restoration of such instruments has this to say about the almost perfectly inaccessible pipework in the Pianolin: "When I’ve voiced and tuned Pianolin pipes, we put the pipe chest on a nearby bench and ran a hose from the pressure reservoir to the pipe chest. After voicing/tuning, we carefully replaced everything in the case so as not to disturb anything."

Another idiosyncrasy of the Pianolin is the poorly thought out way the crankshaft is supported. The two cast iron brackets are screwed to the side of the case, while the vacuum pump is fastened to the bottom left of the case. When in operation the force necessary to move the bellows in the vacuum pump are significant, and as a result alternating forces between the ends of the crankshaft exert a twisting and up and down pressure that is then amplified due to the lever action of the support brackets, and applied to the side of the case. Add this to the forces applied to the floor of the case and you get a situation whereby the case flexes and wobbles around like a drunken sailor, a characteristic common to all Pianolins.

(Electrotone advertising material courtesy of Glenn Grabinsky.)

Electrotone advertisement from the June 22, 1924, issue of the New York Clipper. The air calliope pictures looks to be an early Air-Calio, with wooden pipework, manufactured by the Artizan Factories, Inc. The above image, albeit of poor quality, has greatly helped to understand the evolution of the Air-Calio, and how early the Air-Calio line might have been introduced, very likely circa 1923.

Return to the Electrotone text in the Artizan Air-Calio section.

(Electrotone advertising material courtesy of Glenn Grabinsky.)

Electrotone advertisement from the September 18, 1920, issue of The Billboard. While this advertisement does not specifically deal with air calliopes, it does, nevertheless, demonstrate the close relationship between the North Tonawanda Musical Instrument Works (who manufactured the Pianolin discussed above) and the Electrotone Auto Music Company. It cannot be stated for certain that the Electrotone Auto Music Company rebuilt band organs, but it is likely, knowing that the company had long maintained a repair shop.