I have recently procured a small Dutch Street Organ from Alan Pell of
Links,  England, which I believe to be an outstanding product. It has
several unique features which I believe are very innovative and which I
will talk about in following paragraphs. It uses a MIDI Playback System
with the music residing in a 3 1/2" computer floppy disk. The 41 tunes
on the disk use only about 35% of the disk's capacity. The organ is
advertised as a 33 key organ but it actually uses only 31. It has 75
pipes including 5 large base helper.  Air is supplied by the quietest
blower that I have experienced.  The blower should be much more reliable
than bellows. Three of the 31 keys are used to control the Violin, Glok
and the Bourdon Registers, 3 keys for the drums and the remaining 25
keys for the notes. Pell took his standard 33 Key Gavioli Style Organ
and redesigned it to significantly reduce it's size for my application.
Pell has a very talented artist with him that painted a beautiful copy
of a Dutch Master's waterway scene on the facade.

Pell has gotten a Dutch Street Organ sound by using double ranks in both
the Bourdon and the Violin Registers tuned celest. The results have been
an organ with a delightful sound that you can listen to all day. Too
many of my projects have bee put on hold while I stand around  listening
to the organ.

The unique features of the organ are the lack of a Cancel Key, the use
of electronic registers and the MIDI Disk Player. While I have not
actually confirmed this, it appears that Pell uses any new register
control signal to cancel all the then in use registers while resetting
the desired registers for the next part of the tune. The use of
electronic registers eliminates the need for a pneumatic register box.
The electronic registers should be much more reliable.  Each pipe has
air supplied to it at all times and is controlled by a solenoid air
valve at it's base which is activated by the Electronic Control Box. The
solenoids and air valves are fast enough to eliminate the need for a
Tremolo Register. While it's not very traditional, the disk player takes
care of the music wear problem.

I have experienced one problem with the organ. If the DC power is
applied to the Disk Drive at the same time that power is applied to the
blower and the Electronic Unit, the circuit breaker in the Electronic
Unit will blow. The addition of a time delay of a couple of seconds in
the application of DC to the Disk Player has solved the problem.

The organ is mounted on the rear of a electric Yamaha Golf Cart dressed
up as a fire engine (idea stolen from Gene Headly of Angora, Michigan).
It's an ideal Marriage!  The cart's batteries provide enough weight to
make the cart very stable even with a 208 pound organ mounted on the
rear.  The batteries also provide the AC power for the organ through a
32VDC/115VAC Inverter. It would take a week or more of playing to run
the batteries down to the point where the cart couldn't haul itself
back into it's trailer. The cart makes it easier to move around at band
organ rallies and be in parades. This last weekend I was in the
Solvang, CA , Old Danish Days Parade and won the first prize in the
music category.

If anyone would like to see and hear the organ, I will have it in the
Fullerton College Arboretum Rally in Los Angeles on October 16th and
17th. See Shirley Nix's article in the Sept. 22nd MMD on the Fullerton
College doings.

Alan Pell can be reached at:
    Alan.Pell@btinternet.com.geentroep [ drop .geentroep to reply ]

Jim Westcott