What effect(s) might you put on something to make it sound like an ice cream truck...?  I'm having a hard time finding a patch or sample that is close.  I've tried it with both 'the entertainer' and also just making up a little ditty.
 
So far I've gotten up a music box sample... added some pitch bend here and there to emulate the dopler effect, and then double tracked it panned hard left/right and pitch shifted one track down 25 cents to give it a nice out-of-tune effect.  Wondering if anyone has any other ideas.....??

Hmm. Interesting.
You might also try a glockenspiel or xylophone sound. They always seem to overdrive the speakers, so maybe run that through an amp sim with a little distortion.
Roll off high and low. Those trucks usually have really bad speakers with nothing but midrange.
Maybe a delay and/or some healthy reverb.
I'd like to hear what you come up with. This could be fun.

Hmmm... will try that.  I'll post before and after versions with the overdrive and EQ.  I'm still trying to either write a song or find something to use.  I was using 'music box dancer' because that's what the ice cream truck by my house uses but I just looked it up and it looks like that song isn't in the public domain.  Is that possible?  I figured it had been around forever... especially with the ice cream trucks using it and I'm sure they're not paying royalties...

Check out these links.

http://www.kvraudio.com/f.um/viewtopic.php?t=93499

https://soundcloud.com/th.gstocome/ice-cream-truck 
 
You might try RMix to narrow the frequency range or use the Cakewalk AliasFactor plug-in to give it a real Lo-Fi sound.  

I ended up using Joplin's "The Cascades" because it sounded right.

Taking your advice, here is a mix with the top and bottom rolled off and a small amount of distortion:

http://www.koskenmaki.com/icecreamdist.mp3

The original mix was way too bright so this helped a lot.  I like that one the best but here's another one I liked using only Magma's "radio filtered overdrive":

http://www.koskenmaki.com/icecreamfilter.mp3

Anyway I'm still open to any and all suggestions.  Thanks!

It's still to hi fi,, needs some trashing, I'd almost be tempted to go down to Home Depot and ask them if you can borrow a PA horn from the outside yard for a few hours,,, that would nail it. 

I'd put some amp sim on it and using a Para EQ Kill all but the MId range and narrow the bandwidth Q and sweep the EQ until it sounds right. 

What an interesting project!

I agree with Johnny - it wants trashing with EQ, distortion and a fair bit more pitch variation

http://www.2shared.com/au..._Cream_Truck_Song.html



Check out the Utube selections, people have even composed songs. 

The sound seem generated by a greeting card style synth. 

I'd approach it as the Telephone Effect. The Sonitus EQ has a Telephone preset that will get you in the ballpark. Add a distortion plugin after and you should be there. I've used Guitar Rig for that, but any of the free distortion/amp sim plugins (e.g. CamelCrusher) will do. Any piano patch ought to work, but I'd also try a Wurlitzer or RMI electric piano patch if you have them available.

The sound is more a 2 bit synth that is trying to sound like a piano sound. This will work -