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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3617 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 7, 2015

They make 'em! That's the other funny thing - my parents split up in 2007. They don't talk. My mother got her a brand new one for her birthday (on time, even!). The new ones aren't the old ones, though.

The old ones were a music box with records that tinkled the chimes like a player piano. You wound it up and it spun. the new ones are digital; you still wind 'em up but the winding does nothing more than spin the platter and spin an encoder that tells the synthesizer to play. The records have big fat grooves on them that depress two or more of four buttons in the playhead. The songs are triggered by different combinations of button presses. They sound pretty good but not nearly as awesome as the old ones. But hey - the old ones are easier to work, and they slow down delightfully as they wind down. The new ones always start songs at the beginning and play them at perfect tempo until they stop.