Regina Music Box Company A Brief History

In 1894, the Regina Company was founded. The cylinders on most Regina and other high-end name brand boxes may have as many as 10,000 pins on a 13 inches long comb. The tuned music combs have teeth that must be tuned after a piece has been moved or relocated to a particular location. 

The Regina Music box's rich sound remains unsurpassed in America and elsewhere as the mechanism for the instrument differs from others of the period. The interchangeable music disks made by Regina would fit all of their boxes of the same size.

These interchangeable disks or tune sheets as they were called at the time of their introduction in the late 19th Century are typically white in color or silver in color with a printed Regina logo and other graphic designs.

The Regina tune sheets are steel discs with the printed song title and logo directly on the disk. The metal projections below the tune sheet hit a star wheel similar to a clock gear as the disk passes by. The star wheel rotates as it plucks the teeth of the music combs to produce music.
 

Single or Double Combs

On most Regina music boxes, one (single) or two (double) combs are mounted under one radius of the tune sheet, and thus move across about half the case width. The comb and wheel mechanism are mounted to a steel plate that runs across the full width or half the width of the case.

The plate is bolted to the wooden cabinet which thus acts as a sounding board and produces the volume for the music. The popularity of these boxes spanned from about 1890 to 1915 by Regina. As the gramophone replaced these state of the art music boxes, the Regina firm produced a combination music box and phonograph from 1915 to 1920, but never experienced the success of its famed music boxes.
 

(The Changer) Regina's most popular music box was the charger models. These marvels were state of the art construction when they were produced They came in a wide variety of styles and sizes. The most popular and rarest of them all were the 27" chargers. The model 41 is the most desirable of this Model series size.

Below are some photo's of Regina Music Boxes.