Mike Knudsen wrote a few days ago about the Sandusky rally

> The two most frequently asked questions were:
>
> Q1:  Where's your monkey?
> A1:  I only need him to take the money; we're doing this for fun.
>
> Q2:  Did you build this yourself?
> A2:  I wish!

I have a list of 10 most commonly asked questions that I will share with
the list sometime (includes such as can you put a motor on it for hand
cranked organs and can you crank it by hand for large motor driven organs).

> But there were at least four home-built large organs there.  Two, "Trudy"
> and "The Spirit of San Diego" had been built from scratch to unique fully
> chromatic scales by their owners

Trudy's owner, of course, is our own Dave Wasson who is an arranger
extrordinaire. I also listened last week to some fantastic "fiddle tunes"
arranged by him for the Mills Violano Virtuoso.

> European organs were fairly well represented, including two in-your-face
> Bruders.

There were actually three. Ron Bopp had his 52 keyless Gebruder Bruder
organ and Terry Haughawout displayed his 49 keyless Wilhelm Bruder Sohne
organ and we had our 81 key Wilhelm Bruder Sohne organ on display.

> Special mention goes to the finest looking and sounding organ
> there, the 92-key Steenput/Verbeeck belonging to the Krughoffs.

This is actually a 97 key organ. It was formerly known as "De Windmolen" in
the Netherlands and was a 94 key von Steenput. During restoration, Johnny
Verbeek enlarged it to its present 97 key configuration.

> I got to compare my 11-year-old Raffin 31/84 with a nearly
> identical newer model, and trade tuning and maintenance hints after its
> owner found that mine cranked easier than his.  For hand-crankers, the
> Raffins still give a lot of good music for the size and cost.

There is a good reason that the newer Raffins crank harder. Raffin
redesigned the pump when they began building the new trumpet organ.
Since then, they put the same pump in all the 31 note organs plus the
20 note concert organ which is in the same case as the 31s.

Incidentally, I am going to sell my 31/84 Raffin, Italian inlaid case,
cart, umbrella stand, 30 music rolls. Please contact me if anyone is
interested.

I'm sorry I somehow missed meeting Mike at the rally, it would have been
nice to meet another MMDer in person.

For Matt Caulfield who wrote in a later MMD: Elise Roenigk was registered
but did not attend the rally this year. We missed her of course. Next
year's rally will be in Berien Springs, MI, on the weekend of July 25,
26, 27, 1998.

Bob Conant
Endicott, NY