My Super Cool Mechanical Music Box

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During a trip to Goodwill, I found a practically brand new mechanical music box for under $2. It has no electronics, and plays music notes based on small holes on a strip of paper. Check it out!
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[@nigelcarren]

I would wear this thing out on my home studio... spending hours hand-punching my own compositions..... ....... Damn, I have got to find a girlfriend! 😂

[@JaydenLawson]

Hey Jeremy :) Did you know I'm struggling to find a single video on KZbin that shows how the paper roll music box mechanism works. I thought you were about to show it, but arrrgh - another one stopped short. Been here for at least an hour!! So it might be a video worth making :)

[@athletic-dashole8648]

You need to mount it into a box so that the sound resonates like a guitar

[@noctis1306]

I like this angle of camera instead of the more recent one in my opinion 😍

[@typingcat]

Plays happy birthday, gets a cease-and-desist letter from Warner Brothers lawyers.

[@johnhernandez3134]

Wow that is an awesome find at goodwill!!!

[@pratyushbiswas7582]

My dream gift as I love mechanical machines and music

[@lukakagamine1]

Oh my! I am totally gonna buy this!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@domingopiraman3192]

me to ps the sound is creepy but awsome to

[@Stonerponysaur]

Nice find. I bought this exact box for 30 dollars new.

[@WhatDadIsUpTo]

I will be looking forward to a follow-up video, hopefully, showing how this works. I build music boxes, which are powered by windmills and use a completely different approach, but using this approach, I could undulate the paper within the sound box and play a fully orchestrated piece.

[@Numocron]

I love music boxes. They're the most fascinating mechanical musical instruments ever invented by Antoine Favre Salamon.❤️😍🥰🎶🎵

[@cheliae8560]

Yes, pre-punched music papers - or someone who punches out your melody for you with a little harmony thrown in. I wonder if anyone's doing it. Thanks for the above info!

[@sonjatheien5409]

I recognize this mechanism from a pipe hurdygurdy organ. There you have to put in paper stripes too.

[@Brandonvilches0721]

Kikkerland music box: create your own

[@slmndw]

Very cool!

[@leome1601]

Piece of art 😀

[@karinakim8471]

Super cool

[@baddragonite]

Pretty good find

[@chocochipkookiies1769]

your voice is really soothing lol

[@inggaming6035]

so cute 😍😍😍😍

[@samueldonlon3644]

Nice man

[@andreasculthorp6104]

*insert me playing the Tetris theme*

[@majorskies7091]

2 DOLLARS? Man, I have to purchase this new for approx 30 USD

[@rajeshmhatre273]

Major Skies I purchased fir 11$

[@jestfullgremblim8002]

Wtf

[@sumwunspeshal235]

It costs about $16 now :'(

[@valineaquino5097]

i was hoping it wasn't true. its 20$ now :(

[@serafinbitetti4289]

Haha :v

[@filgiupo4853]

is40

[@shrekwizowskee2910]

What do you bet its gonna be over 69420 dollars within a decade or two?

[@whatsupguys8547]

Can this be used to make pasta?

[@laurasoswag4201]

What's up guys yes

[@utamonk]

No it’s obviously used for raviolis

[@srin_meow]

Epic

[@alexandrafaith7464]

Where to buy it?😭

[@kieairrinteig4522]

Your midrange roll lol

[@rohitsharma1007]

Can someone please explain how it works. I know how metal one works but here I don't get what is vibrating to create music

[@MrWhite-lr8to]

Where can I buy more paper for the music box?

[@tokagehideto]

Aliexpress

[@Animelover-bk4tu]

Can it only play C Major? I have one exactly like this, and I kind of was hoping I could manage a Bb, but it currently doesn't seem possible.

[@bayleemiller1477]

Animelover 267 it only works on c major I have one. Hope this helps

[@eunhaneunanae8497]

guys can someone give me a reference on how to make automatic mudis box where you spin it before it run itself

[@cupcakes4100]

Hehe I want one =D

[@TheTrollik75]

Im curious, how does a hole in paper make sound?

[@catstuff9681]

Idk

[@semihiseri]

See the metallic gears at 6:03. They have teeth to catch the holes, and then they rotate as the paper moves. There are multiple teeth on the gear; as they rotate, one of them hits the metal springs. There comes the sound!

[@justinnaramor6050]

@@semihiseri Yes I know this reply is late, but for a while I also found myself wondering how the holes in the paper allow the notes to play. Your explanation makes sense. Another thing to note is that, obviously, there has to be something in the machine that can provide torque to those metallic gears you mentioned; something has to allow them to rotate in the first place. It is my understanding that the gears are attached to a spindle (or shaft, or rod, or axle, or whatever the heck you want to call it), and this gives the wheels their rotational energy. The reason they actually 'rotate' only when the holes in the punch card pass over the teeth is most likely because the axle is trying to rotate those gears in one particular direction, but the "hole-less" parts of the punch card are trying to push them in the opposite direction, causing them to refuse to rotate (even though the axle is still always rotating). It's similar to someone trying to rotate a disk in 2 opposing directions which means it resists rotating altogether. That resistance is broken when a hole in the punch card slides over a tooth on a gear, allowing the gear to rotate freely. Do you think this is an accurate observation? I'm visually impaired to the point of being blind, so I've also been wondering how this works.

[@semihiseri]

@@justinnaramor6050 you are right! Those white plastic disks on the video are acting like a slip clutch (the construction is like white disk, metal gear, white disk, metal gear...). So the metal gears can slip until there is a hole.

[@justinnaramor6050]

@@semihiseri Are you sure that's how it works? I thought I remembered reading that those plastic disks were simply acting as "spacers" between the metal gears. Shouldn't the punch card be acting more as the "clutch" or "brake"? Think about it. A clutch has 2 rotating shafts, just like the music box does: one shaft is driven by the crank (and it drives the punch card through the machine so it acts as a roller), while the other shaft drives the metal gears that pluck the metal strips which vibrate to make music (let's just call them "plucking wheels"). Both shafts should be rotating at the same time (because they're connected together by the gears, and so is the hand crank, which is the power source). But their needs to be a way to either initiate or interrupt the rotation of the plucking wheels, otherwise they would always be spinning and therefore the metal tines would always be making sound, because the teeth on the plucking wheels would always be running over the tines... obviously this isn't desired. So isn't this what the punch card is actually doing, not the plastic disks? When there's no hole in the punch card, the rotational energy of the crank and gears should not be transmitted to the plucking wheels... until a hole in the card slides over a tooth on a wheel. In other explanations I've seen for these music boxes, I've never seen anyone mention plastic disks acting as clutches to either initiate or interrupt the metal gears rotating... I've always been under the impression that the punch card is doing that. Everyone has said that the plucking wheels are allowed to rotate when a hole in the card physically passes over a tooth on a wheel... not when some kind of plastic disk allows it to. It seems to me, then, that the card should be acting more as the clutch. a hole in the card "locks" one plucking wheel to its rotating shaft, and so it's permitted to freely spin. The other wheels on the same shaft cannot rotate, unless instructed to do so by the punch card. When no holes are present at any point as the card continues to move, the rotational energy of all plucking wheels is interrupted, because of the friction between the card and the plucking wheels as the card prevents them from spinning. The only way I could see this working is when the card tries to rotate the wheels in the direction that's opposite to the direction in which they're being allowed to rotate. If the disks you speak of are really in fact acting as clutches, then perhaps what's happening is that the card presses down on them when there's no hole (which would therefore cause them to press against the plucking wheels, preventing them from spinning), but then they move up as soon as a hole appears, allowing them to spin again? Your explanation makes it sound like there would be one disk for each plucking wheel, which would make sense (obviously). I don't really see how else this could work. I did mention before that I'm visually impaired to the point of being completely blind, so maybe that's the reason I'm still a little confused? Feel free to clarify this a bit more; this is really quite fascinating to me.

[@induraj8558]

A Dragging presentation

[@deneho]

Could you tell us the link on Goodwill ?

[@JeremyHill]

There is no link. I went into the store to buy it.

[@deneho]

Jeremy Hill I can't find without the link...

[@UtahraptrGD4857]

how do you play greensleeves on it?

[@T.A.B.U]

$1.91 what where

[@laurasoswag4201]

Giang Nguyen good will

[@user-dp6rc2km5w]

Hello

[@natski4288]

Is it just only me that want to see what the bottom looks like?

[@etherealmonk007]

How this works

[@justinnaramor6050]

Warning: this reply is going to get long, so I apologize in advance. You asked how this music box works. I asked myself the same question when I saw these music boxes (particularly after listening to this video). I'm visually impaired to the point of being blind, so I think that gives me even more of a reason to wonder how this thing works! :) There's not a lot of clear information on the internet about how this particular type of music box works. When I learned about the "conventional" music boxes (the ones that use a rotating cylinder with protruding pins for their music), it was absolutely 100 percent obvious how they work... it just makes so much sense! But with this particular type of music box that essentially plays music using hole-punched paper? I was like "what? That's weird! How the heck do holes in paper translate to controlling the notes in a music box? Is it somehow using some "hidden" advanced technology to read the music and then play it"? Well, long story short, when reading about these hole-punched-paper-strip-style music boxes I ended up learning about a guy called Manu Prakash who invented a mechanical chemistry set that reads holes in paper in the same way that music box does. He has a whole document online that explains how it works, and it's explained very thoroughly as well. He explained it so well that I've used (or rather, paraphrased) his explanation to help people understand how the music box works, because his chemistry set literally uses the same type of mechanism for detecting holes in paper and reacting to them. So finally, with all that out of the way, I'll explain how this works for you. As you could probably tell from this video, the music box is powered by a hand crank; this is where everything starts; any machine has to start with a source of power, obviously. Now, as you turn that crank, it rotates a gear that's connected to it; that gear rotates a shaft that acts like a "roller". This "roller" is responsible for continuously pushing the paper through the slots on the machine. At the same time the first gear is rotating that roller, it engages with a second gear; this gear rotates a second shaft. That second shaft is responsible for providing rotational energy to a set of metal sprocket-like wheels running along the shaft's length. Now, as the first shaft (the "roller") pushes the paper through, the underside of the paper pushes against the sprocket-like wheels, which prevents them from spinning. That's because that second shaft is trying to rotate them in one particular direction, but the paper is trying to push them in the opposite direction (to understand what I mean, try using one hand to rotate a disk in one direction while using your other hand to try to rotate it in the opposite direction; notice how the disk refuses to rotate). Now, as the roller shaft pushes the paper through, the holes in the paper will have to eventually slide over the teeth on the sprocket wheels. You know what this means? The sprocket wheels can finally rotate! Yay! So, as one tooth on a sprocket wheel slides into a hole in the paper as the sprocket wheel rotates, one of the other teeth on that same wheel finally hits the corresponding strip of metal that vibrates to produce a sound! And that, my friend, is how the music box works. Regarding those sprocket wheels on the second shaft, there is one sprocket wheel for each note. So if the music box had 8 notes, there would be 8 of those sprocket wheels. If there were 15 notes, there would be 15 of those sprocket wheels, 20 notes would mean 20 sprocket wheels, 30 notes would mean 30 wheels, and so on. Hope this helps! It's really pretty interesting to learn about how things like this work. Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention: the music box also has a metal plate that's most likely held down by a spring of some kind; this should help keep the paper strip pressed against the sprocket wheels.

[@etherealmonk007]

@@justinnaramor6050 thank you sm❤.

[@justinnaramor6050]

@@etherealmonk007 You're welcome. I don't get why some folks try to overcomplicate how this thing works; I've read about how it works (particularly from reading about how Manu Prakash applied this mechanism to his chemistry set, and other explanations online as well), and I really have just decided to come to the conclusion that it really is pretty simple how it works. I even wrote a comment to a guy called Jester Musician who has used this music box (or at least the 'larger' version of it with more notes). I provided him with my understanding of how it works, using a similar explanation as what I just gave you, and he said my observation was correct. It would have to be correct; there's just no other way I could see it working... at all.

[@etherealmonk007]

@@justinnaramor6050 yeah It's pretty simple mechanism. ig I saw this video 2 years ago ,, that time I had no idea how this thing works and I searched and got a video of the same but a very big music box, it was a full closed box, and I thought like there are steele balls inside that and they fall through the holes in the paper to some metal piece to make sound. Very happy to get your reply. You are awesome.

[@justinnaramor6050]

@@etherealmonk007 You mentioned something about steel balls hitting metal pieces: That's a cool idea, a sort of "marble machine", if you will, that plays music from holes in paper! You know, that idea of a musical "marble machine" totally reminds me of that video from "Wintergatan". I presume you've seen it? Is there anyone on the planet who hasn't? :)) the difference is that device from Wintergatan uses pins on a rotating cylinder to play music, not holes in paper; I guess the pins engage with a mechanism that drops the marbles onto the instruments. But a marble machine that uses holes in paper would be a cool idea! But for real though, you're correct; the way the music box shown in this video works is pretty simple. I'm just surprised, though, that there's not more information on the internet about how it works (I.E how the holes in the strip actually cause the music box to make sound). You really do have to look hard to find that info, and the only place where I've ever found it is on the very typical "internet forums", rather than some qualified engineer to explain it. But then again, you don't always have to be an engineer to understand how something works especially if it's actually a very simple mechanism. Anyways, this has been a fun conversation! I'm going to do something else for a while :)

[@clariona]

See how I've arranged music for this wonderful instrument over the past couple of years and enjoy. If the links don't work, just check out Player Music Box Arranged by Michael. There are three parts so far. I'll try to give the links in another comment.