I'll probably send off for that set of CD recordings, but I'm really
intrigued by what people have been calling this instrument.  Was it
really built from conventional church and theater organ pipes, as
opposed to wooden pipes specifically made for band organ use?

I have several ranks of church pipes from which I'm hoping to build a
sort of universal player organ, oriented more to band organ music than
the classics.  What I'd like is some assurance that some negative
things I've heard over the years are not entirely true:

 - Church pipes just won't sound right in a band organ;
 - Metal pipes won't survive in a mobile organ;
 - Metal pipes are too darn heavy; you'll never be able to move the
   beast once it's built;
 - Any other negatives that we've all heard.

I probably wouldn't expect the organ to be mobile, but maybe
transportable (I'm not quite sure what I mean by that, but we can
talk it through).

I could use just a couple octaves of each rank to build a band-organ
type architecture, or include all the pipes to allow more freedom in
arranging.  I've even conceived of a "docking organ" notion: build a
small, portable organ with limited ranges of pipes, to play like a
small band or street organ, but at home it could be "docked", wheeled
up to a stationary installation of the remaining pipes, to play fuller
arrangements.  Anyone ever hear of such a thing?  Imagine your crank
organ soloing in front of a full pipe organ!

Mike Knudsen