Glen Jedlicka asked if I was the one who made the Roy Norman organ
he ended up with as the basis for his MIDI & Wurlitzer 125 roll
band organ.  This is my reply to him, sent 6/13/2009.

Roy Norman was at a MBS convention 25 years ago, selling good sets
of plans on 8-1/2" by 14" paper stapled together.  He was an old man
at that time but he sold a lot of those what he titled the "System
Gavioli" street organ.  I think he was from Tennessee or thereabouts.

Several other people there at the convention apparently had seen or
knew about that organ.  Roy was giving workshops and so appeared in
a picture in the old MBS Bulletin giving a workshop.  I have seen
a couple of times very well-built parts that others had started to
build the organ and from the evidence a fair number of organs were
built or at least started.

Only one of my four organs had what you would call a professionally
made case using the corrugated inch-long hammer-in-frame joint clips
which I felt was kind of un-professional.  I had a cabinet shop start
to make for me, but only one, and I converted it to a Wurlitzer 125
roll frame I made and bolted a jackshaft and motor to the side.

All four organ had these Jacuzzi compressor flywheel crank pulleys
that had cast-in fan blades and the V-belt pulley was on the side
smaller than the actual flywheel part and they were green.  The crank
handle was bolted to one of the cast iron fan blades.

Jim DeRoin was an old carny man that ran away from home and joined
a carnival servicing the fair organs after probably serving an
apprenticeship as a "pony punk", as my great-grandfather was.  Jim
lived on a little farm on a little island of land in the middle of
Castro Valley, the town I grew up in as a teenager, and by the time
I discovered him he was in the business of modifying and buying and
selling automated music machines.

He used to give me a lot of business making pipes and restoring
bellows, et cetera, and really encouraging me till he died.  That was
when I converted the last Roy Norman organ to roll operation and sold
it and resumed my struggle to just make a living, not on pipes anymore.

But now I'm back, making Unda Maris or "Waves of the sea" double
Bourdon stopped pipes, with two back to back and with one tuned
slightly lower than the principal other, rather than Celeste tuning
which has one tuned slightly higher!  It gives the organ that
breathing, kind of like it's alive sound that mostly European organs
have.  Ray Siou had an organ that sounded like that in his store front
in Oakland when I would go buy rolls from him.

Anyway, I thought the brass piccolos would sound dull just by
themselves.  Usually they would play with violins or harmonic open
flutes (loosely called flageolets) but an octave too high and sound too
shrill, I think.  Seeburg or Nelson-Wiggen, or was it Cremona, made
wonderful harmonic pipes, a lot like violin pipes but with node holes
instead of freins.

Now I have a thickness planer and am working on nine or ten sets of the
Unda Maris pipes and will maybe make the violins next.  Google on "Bob
Essex organ builder" on the Internet and you will see his Unda Maris
pipes and plans on his beautiful blue web site.  Thanks for the shout!

Yours truly
Robert Leber