In the Player Piano Business, He Finds the Key Is Authenticity
In a nondescript warehouse amid the alfalfa fields and vineyards of the San Joaquin Valley, Ken Caulkins and a half-dozen employees create an amazing array of automated musical instruments.
A calliope for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August is under construction there today.
Other customers include entertainer Michael Jackson, who bought an 8 1/2-foot-tall street clock, the “Cheers” television show, the Hollywood Wax Museum, Busch Gardens, Marine World, the Euro-Disney park and about two dozen other amusement parks around the world.
Caulkins’ Ragtime Music Co. is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of player pianos, nickelodeons, calliopes, band organs, carousel organs and musical popcorn machines.
Many of his creations are housed in handsomely restored pianos of the late 1800s and early 1900s, finished to fit into some of the country’s most elegant homes, hotels and private clubs. Others are as garish as the amusement parks, carnivals, taverns and toy stores where they end up.
“Everything we do is authentic. Everything runs on air, just as in the originals. Everything runs on rolls, just as in the originals,” Caulkins said.
“It would be cheaper to do it electronically. But people like the nostalgia of the piano rolls, and as soon as they hear it, everyone can tell it’s not recorded music,” he said. “And it’s always a kick for me to see fathers get down on their knees and explain to their kids how the holes in the rolls and the air make the piano play.”
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Although Caulkins manufactures nearly all of the working parts of his pianos and other instruments himself--he has molds to manufacture 170 different piano parts--he says they are all true to the turn-of-the-century technology of the original player pianos.
He builds his own cabinets for band organs and other specially designed instruments. But all of his pianos are restored, because that’s what customers want.
“If I built new pianos, I’d have more money in them, and they wouldn’t have the appeal of the old pianos,” he said. “And the old uprights generally are in pretty good shape, because they were well-built, and they’re easy to restore.”
He has 50 to 100 old pianos regularly in stock for customers to pick from to be restored to their specifications, including stained-glass panels made by Caulkins’ workers.
A finished piano has about 500 feet of hose sending air from a compressor to operate the piano hammers and keyboard and up to a dozen other instruments, including drums, chimes, tambourines, triangles, blocks, flute pipes and perhaps a mandolin, xylophone or accordion.
The rolls, manufactured by a separate nearby company, offer a selection of more than 500 songs, mostly 10 per roll.
Caulkins sells player pianos directly or through dealers in all 50 states and at least 20 foreign countries. He says his business is expanding fastest today in Asia and Europe--especially Japan, Holland and Germany.
“We’re finding a big market in the Pacific Rim. In part, they’re emulating Disneyland,” he said.
Caulkins said except for Euro-Disney, he hasn’t built anything for Disneyland, which does most of its own work, but that many customers who want “the nostalgic flavor of Disneyland” come to him.
Caulkins recently sent 20 player pianos to a chain of Japanese clothing stores, which use them to attract customers, and he is currently completing eight band organs for a chain of Japanese toy stores.
The band organs are being built next to the two Jamaican steel drum bands--an amazing combination of automated, air-driven bass, snare and steel drums, cymbals and tambourines that also operate on piano rolls.
Caulkins also makes giant antique-style street clocks, train whistles and “orchestrions,” which consist of up to a dozen automated musical instruments housed in handcrafted oak, mahogany or other fine wood cabinets.
Calliopes and other instruments are also designed to be mounted on antique firetrucks or band wagons for parades and picnics.
Prices vary with each customer’s specifications. Player and nickelodeon pianos range from $3,000 to $18,000. A musical popcorn wagon is $8,000. A complete band wagon, including the restored Model A truck it is mounted on, is $28,000. A do-it-yourself kit to convert your own piano to a roll-driven player is $1,450. Train whistles, built from a combination of calliope pipes, run from $59 to $129.
Caulkins, a 44-year-old father of three from nearby Modesto, said he first became fascinated with player pianos at age 16 when he saw one belonging to a girlfriend’s parents.
A short time later, his grandmother heard a caller to a talk radio show ask if anyone knew of a player piano restorer, and she told him about it.
“I found the technical manuals, and saw how simple the mechanism was. I decided I could do that,” he said.
Then a neighbor asked him to convert an upright. He soon came to the attention of the Gallo family, whose winery empire is based in Modesto. He made player pianos for several Gallo executives, and the company commissioned him to build an eight-instrument, 8-foot-tall orchestrion for the company’s employee picnics and other events.
“That took about three months to build, but it gave me an in-depth understanding of the technology,” he said.
Since then, he has built or restored about 8,000 pianos, Caulkins said.
But that’s not all. Caulkins is restoring a 1906 amusement park steam engine and laying track for it around his home on a 40-acre ranch a few miles from his shop. He also has restored farm machinery and carousel horses from the turn of the century and buggies from the 1800s at the ranch.
“Almost all of my interests are from the turn of the century--buggies, steam engines, player pianos, calliopes,” he said.
Of course there is the computer room at his ranch home, where Caulkins designs and produces his brochures and advertising materials, the video room where he produces videotape instructions for service and repair of his pianos, and a computer-programmable robot which he hasn’t found any use for yet.
