Riding the Central Park Carousel on a Warm April Day.

I am riding the famous Central Park Carousel with its Ruth & Sohn 33 organ playing Wurlitzer 150 rolls on a warm April day in New York. It was up to 84 degrees at Central Park on this April 18, 2008 so it felt like summer.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• landmark
• Central
• Park
• Carousel
• band
• organ
• Ruth
• 33
• amusement

[KawhackitaRag]

Who has been doing maintenance on the Ruth?

[alterman156]

Gavin McDonough at last I heard is the person who is maintaining the Ruth organ. I wish in some ways the organ was palying the original scale vs. the Wurlitzer 150 scale since all of the pipes would play and there would be 6 bass notes instead of 3. The organ would then be almost fully chromatic in the melody register and would sound even better.

[KawhackitaRag]

I agree. They should put it back to books, have a non-obtrusive MIDI system added similar to the Gebruder Bruder 107 formerly at Seaport Village (CA) [except, with all controls hidden inside the case to reduce tampering] and maybe a few token recut books to feed through the keyframe whenever a demonstration is necessary. There are so many hundreds of tunes available for the 33 scale, including many American tunes, that they would never run out of music to play.

[alterman156]

The MIDI system would be find too. Then literally thousands of tunes would be available to play at a moments notice. Then you would certainly have an almost endless supply of music to play from oldy moldys to the latest hits.

[alterman156]

It is good band organ music considering that the arranger had only two accidental keys to work with. There were also only three bass notes to work with too. It is quite tricky to get around the limitations of the Wurlitzer 150 roll scale.

[whoisthisguy724]

Roll #14513, tunes #9 and 10: "Popeye the Sailor Theme" and "Sleeping Beauty Waltz", arr. Bob Stuhmer. I've heard this roll numerous times at Kennywood, who's Wurlitzer 153 also gets service from Gavin McDonough.

[anglerfly]

I made a video of  this carousel too!

[anglerfly]

@KawhackitaRag Is that why the horses on knoebel's S&G are bigger than most kiddie horses?

[KawhackitaRag]

@cecildover Yes I believe these are the largest carousel figures on an operating American carousel. Stein and Goldstein built several GIGANTIC carousels of five and even six (!) rows with horses that were reportedly life-size(!!!). However, all of those were dismantled long ago. This 4-row Stein and Goldstein is the largest left made by that company.

[KawhackitaRag]

@alterman156 One problem that MIDI has is that it could be subject to tampering by ride operators, for example, people trying to load inappropriate music to play (well, to be fair, by "inappropriate" I mean a tune that is not specifically arranged for the 33 scale and would play a lot of wrong notes!). A possible and feasible solution would be to convert one of the roll frames to play the roll version of the 33 scale (spooled in reverse, of course). The other frame could still play 150 rolls.

[anglerfly]

Its a circus theme carousel. 0:00 Disney or cartoon medley. Description: Stein & Goldstein

[anglerfly]

@cecildover mfg Stein and Goldstein. THe organ is made by: Ruth Und sohn and its really old. Its from germany and its a Ruth model 33B ( you will find videos of 33As ) and the carousel is specail.

[cecildover]

@anglerfly When I first saw the Central Park Carousel a few years ago I was drawn to it by the sounds of the organ wafting out into the park, but upon reaching it I was awe struct by the size of the animals. They are a good 20% larger than any I have seen. Is this a notable fact about this Carousel? Who Is the Mfg? Love the videos, Thanks.

[anglerfly]

@alterman156 I wonder why he Converted it to 150 Rolls Instead of 165 rolls, it fits the 165 rolls and its big enough! gavin Mcdonoug is good at making band organs and restoring them.

[anglerfly]

Tuned diffrently and its a ruth 33B