MB&F MusciMachine 3

MB&F is celebrating its tenth anniversary with the tagline “A creative adult is a child who survived”. We saw earlier the Melchior, the robot shaped clock that made a lot of buzz at this year’s Baselworld. Today, continuing in the same vein, MB&F unveiled MusicMachine 3, the result of their collaboration with Reuge, a premier manufacturer of music boxes, and JMC Lutherie, a pioneering guitar maker from Le Sentier, in the Vallée de Joux.

As you can already see it from the pictures, the MusicMachine 3 is not your typical dancing ballerina music box that would put children to sleep. Just as the MusicMachine 1 and 2, this is the kind of mechanical toy, that will certainly keep you awake.

MB&F MusicMachine 3 with black finish

Shaped like a TIE fighter from the Star Wars universe, the MusicMachine 3 features all the traditional elements that we would find on a high-end music box. It is powered by two independent movements mounted on the two tail sections. Each movement has its own winding key (disguised as thrusters), a mainspring barrel, horizontal cylinder with pins, and comb with hand-tuned teeth sounding each note. The cylinders play three melodies each. An air regulator in the form of a circular fan (resembling a rotating radar dish) governs the unwinding speed/music tempo of each cylinder.

The MusicMachine 3 with chrome finish

To ensure the lateral symmetry of MM3, Reuge broke with music box convention to configure the two movements as mirror images of one another. This required a complete inversion of the design of the movement components and the movement architecture so that one cylinder rotates clockwise and the other anticlockwise.

The six melodies are famous soundtracks of epic movies, that marked Maximilian Büsser’s childhood. The right cylinder
plays themes from Star Wars (1977), Mission Impossible (1960), and James Bond (1962), while the left plays themes from The Godfather (1972) by Nino Rota, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and The Persuaders (1971) by John Barry.

MB&F MusicMachine 3 in white

As mentioned before, there is a famous guitar maker too that contributed to this exquisite music box, JMC Lutherie. The MusicMachine 3 is equipped with specially designed soundboard that makes the sound louder. energy is transmitted from the vibrating teeth down though the vertical side wings to the resonance base, which not only amplifies the sound, but underlines the beauty of the music. MusicMachine 3’s innovative base combines 350-year-old resonance spruce with 21st-century composite materials like NomexTM honeycomb Kevlar.

MusicMachine 3 is limited to 99 pieces: 33 with white finish, 33 with black finish, and 33 with chrome finish.

Before you go, take a look at this short video presenting the MusicMachine 3 in action:

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