Trial Listening Music Box Movements

Listen to your favorite tune then proceed to our shop to select your Music Box

Our Music Box will sound better than the electronic device you are using to listen with now.

Here's How Your Music Box Works

The music box is a mechanical musical instrument.  Tuned metal prongs, or teeth, mounted in a line on a flat comb are made to vibrate by contact with a revolving music box cylinder. The cylinder is driven by a mechanical clockwork mechanism.

Accordingly, when the cylinder revolves, small pins mounted on its surface pluck the pointed ends of the metal teeth. This causes the teeth to vibrate and produce musical notes. The sequence of notes produced is determined by the arrangement of projections on the cylinder.

Metal teeth that are cut into the comb or flat plate, create a lower pitch when plucked. A spring and gears move the cylinder, and a fly regulator governs the rate at which it turns."

Highly experienced technicians in Sankyo Japan create the 72 note music box movement one at a time. In addition, these craftsmen drive the tiny needles into the cylinder one at a time.

What Makes The Music? The Mechanism Or The Box?

If you were to hold the mechanical part of the music box in your hand and allow it to play you would hear only faint tones. Set the same music box mechanism on a solid surface and suddenly the tones are amplified.

Furthermore, when you place the same music movement inside a custom music box it will produce significantly more amplification. Quality custom boxes made of hardwood and having a bottom resonance board thickness of between 3/16 inch and 1/4 inch provide the best sound resonance and tone.

So, without the music box, you would not have good sound. When the Sankyo 72 note music movement is matched up with our quality hardwood box amazing, beautiful sounds are amplified into your ears.

Tonal Quality and Sound Resonance

(Technical Reading) Tonal Quality

Tonal quality is based on the harmonic content of a sound. A sine wave is only the fundamental frequency. A square wave has all the odd harmonics.

Different wave shapes from different instruments and devices have different harmonic content so they sound different. Some tones are more appealing or soothing or exciting than others and are often listener-based.

As different instruments play they produce different harmonic content and beat frequencies, so different sounds and combinations of sounds can be produced for the same basic notes.

(Technical Reading) Mechanical Resonance 

The word resonance comes from Latin and means to "resound". To sound out together with a loud sound.

Resonance is a common cause of sound production in musical instruments. It is the tendency of a mechanical system to respond at greater amplitude when the frequency of its oscillations matches the system's natural frequency of vibration than it does at other frequencies.