Hofbauer Harmonipan / Mikrobox
By Claus Kucher
Hi Jody, hi Hal,
As to your request for the Hofbauer-Organ I will state information I have collected in the past.
The primary source is a German magazine called
Mechanische Orgelwelt aktuell (Mechanical Organ World News)
Eine Zeitung fuer die Freunde der modernen Mechanischen Musik
A newspaper for friends of modern mechanical music)
I got two issues last week from a Viennese Hofbauer-organ-player, but nowhere you can find an address to order or where does it come from (maybe Walter Tenten or Horst Mohr, member of this group, can tell more about this magazine); to me it seems like a commercial for
Orgelbaumeister Hofbauer GmbH
Postfach 2317
D-37013 Goettingen
Tel. 0551/71001 - Fax 0551/7703351
but there are parts of some articles which sound very interesting.
Carl-Heinz Hofbauer, who is now 68 years old, presented in 1977 at the music fair at Frankfurt/Main, Germany, a 2-manual pipe-organ with electronic control of electromagnetic valves. (Robbie: the storage battery there has a small capacity and is only to supply the electronic circuits and valves - you have to produce air-pressure with your own muscles).
They offer pipe-organs with a so-called control-system "Mikrobox 2000", and in the list of May 1995 the price range is (keys/pipes):
20er/36 Mikrobox-Orgel "Harmonipan"
with melody-register >Magic Flute 8'< DM 9.200
see German article below
26er/48 as above + >Violine 4'< - switchable DM 12.985
...
38er/76 as above + percussion DM 25.970
(Pauke, Becken, Trommelwirbel,
Holzblock, Zimbal, Hi-hat, Crash)
(kettledrum, cymbals, reiterating snare drum,
wood-block, cymbal, hi-hat, Crash cymbal)
54er/96 Mikrobox-Trompetenorgel (trumpet-organ)
with 5 switchable melody-registers + bass DM 47.500
Very interesting is a product called
20er Tanzbaer (dancing bear) with
Mikrobox-control + 2 registers DM 3.980
40er Tanzbaer DM 5.920
I never heard it, but as to a picture it looks like an accordion with a small number of keys (about 10 only). A Tanzbaer player is announced for this MEMUSI 96 [the forthcoming Fair Organ Convention in Vienna]; I will make a report then. (Below you can find extracts of a German article ).
There is included a Standard-Mikrobox with 100 songs and they claim a catalog with more than 1000 tunes with prices of DM 150 - 250 each.
You have to imagine a box in the size of a video tape with a connector of about 50 pins, containing a memory called EPROM (electrically programmable read-only-memory). There is a bus on the mainboard - I think control is done there with an 8bit-CPU - and you can insert various boxes in about 10 slots. On top of the organ is a "keyboard" where you can select titles to play and also a knob (on a potentiometer) to regulate the tempo of the tune (yes, with the crank you make air-pressure only!)
There is a possibility to connect the organs together for an 'orchestra' with a simple 2-wire-cable (the company claims more than 45 organs in a line, but they do not give a more detailed information). The 'alphabet' of the stored songs is incompatible with Midi, which means you have to employ Hofbauer to store your own music there (prices are unknown, but I have heard about Alexander Kubelka, a composer and arranger, now performing with the "Wiener Ensemble" at "Theater an der Josefstadt", that he had to go to Goettingen to supervise the productions of his EPROMs (music he needs for his production to perform on a 38er-Hofbauer) ).
On the other side, last year I saw a player controlling his Hofbauer-organ with a floppy disk player (Roland Brush?). This year I will try to meet the player and find out more (maybe he has a modified electronics inside his organ capable of playing standard- Midi songs).
At least you can find an article comparing Mikrobox-control with other systems (due to time limitations also in German). [The translation of the literature from Claus follows. -- Robbie]
Servus!
Claus Kucher |
(Message sent Sun 14 Jul 1996, 13:07:49 GMT, from time zone GMT+0200.) |
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