STREET ORGAN INFORMATION USA

THE  BEGINNER'S  GUIDE  TO  STREET  ORGANS

If you are thinking of buying a street organ,  here is a useful guide that will help you decide what sort to buy.  This article was written in 1997 by the late  Peter Churchard, the founder of BOGA, in response to the many enquiries he received from new and potential members.  Where builders and music suppliers have their own web pages, links are provided to these as appropriate.

           Present Day Organs

A new interest in Street Organs began to develop in the 1970s and since so few old ones were available, a small number of enthusiasts began thinking about producing copies of these old models.  Some of them went on to become organ builders themselves and others persuaded people who had previously been involved mainly in Church Organs or Fairground Organs to revive the art of building street organs.

Because of the necessary limitation on size and weight the street organ needs to be kept compact, and this is achieved by limiting the number of notes (and therefore pipes) to anything from 20 to 45.  Since each note can play on one or more ranks of pipes the actual pipe count can range from just 20 to a staggering 150 plus and, in order to accomodate them in a small space, pipes are often bent round corners (mitred) and generally tightly packed to fit the case.

At this point it should be mentioned that, in addition to pipe organs, buskers in the 1900s also used a much lighter type of organ using brass reeds (like those in accordions) to produce the sound.  Until very recently the only small reed organ available was produced by Josef Raffin in Germany - now they are being produced by Peter Trueman in England.

The revival of street organ building started first in Germany, the home of the street organ, with builders like Raffin and Hofbauer; and spread principally to the United Kingdom, France and Belgium.

Possibly the best-selling small street organ is the 20 note paper roll player built by Josef Raffin in Ueberlingen in Southern Germany, and these have been sold all over the world in substantial quantities.  In the UK the best seller is probably the 20-note Harmonette, built by Alan Pell.  Another best-seller in the 1990s was the 21-note organs built by Peter Trueman from Chaddesden near Derby.  These play cardboard book music like that used by fairground organs.

The smallest and simplest organ will play just 20 notes and may have only 20 pipes but it's more usual for a 20 note organ to have pairs of pipes playing the nine or eleven melody notes.  These pipes are tuned slightly differently from each other (called celeste tuning) to give a pleasant flutey, slightly wavering sound.

In addition to the pairs of melody pipes which increases the number of pipes from 20 to either 29 or 31, the two or three bass pipes will also be doubled up to give them more power and the ability to respond more quickly; which means that the total number of pipes has now increased to between 31 and 34.  The remaining pipes are used to provide the 'Accompaniment' that is those notes pitched above the bass and below the melody.  The same kind of arithmatic applies to organs with a larger number of notes, and a typical 31 note organ has a total of 84 pipes.

        Registers and Ranks

Where the organ has 'Registers' ie knobs that can be pulled out to vary the tone produced, each of these registers will be associated with its own set or 'Rank' of pipes and thus a 20 note organ with 11 melody pipes controlled by 3 registers will actually have 33 melody pipes and either 44 or 45 pipes in all.

      Choosing the Right Model

Street organs vary widely in price with the simplest costing around £1500 and the most sophisticated and expensive £20,000 or more.  Generally speaking, second-hand models are little different in price from new ones and sometimes sell at a premium.  This is partly due to effects in inflation, but also a reflection of their comparative scarcity and the fact that if you ordered an organ today you might have to wait for anything up to 2 years for it to be built.

Your first decision in selecting an organ almost certainly has to be how much you can afford to pay; but since many grinders become aware of the limitations of their first organ and then decide to trade-up to a better model, it might be worth considering paying more to begin with.

Your second decision is which model within your price range you will be happy to live with long term and this is closely linked to the quality of sound it produces.  Please don't buy the first organ you hear - you need to listen to as wide a variety of makes and models as possible before you make a final decision.  The best way of doing this is to attend festivals or events were street organs are playing and take the opportunity to listen and talk to some of the organ grinders there.  On the whole they're a very friendly bunch and will answer your questions and even let you have a go at playing. 

         Types of Music Storage

Mixed up with the two decisions above is the question of whether the organ you buy should play paper rolls, cardboard books, or music stored on microchips.  Each has its own particular advantages and snags.  In favour of cardboard are the facts that it is extremely hard wearing and that you can play virtually continuously since once the book has run through the organ it can be immediately replaced and played again.  Cardboard music is however larger, heavier and costlier than the equivalent on paper, and books have an annoying habit of blowing all over the place if there's anything of a wind.

Paper roll music beats books on cost, weight and size but suffers from the fact that like a tape player with no fast forward you can't play a tune halfway through the roll without playing those before it first and, once you've finished the roll you must stop and rewind the whole thing back onto its spool before you can start playing again.  You'll have to make up your own mind which of the various advantages and snags are most important to you and choose on that basis, unless of course you've already set your mind on a particular organ - in which case you have to take whatever system the builder uses.

There is a third alternative and that is to buy an organ which stores its music on microchips - nothing to carry apart from a few chips!  Hofbauer in Germany and Alan Pell in England are the two builders most advanced with the use of microchips but please don't think of their organs as being 'Electronic' except in this one respect of having their music stored on a chip instead of paper or cardboard.  True, they do use electronics to read the music and some of them even substitute an electric blower to provide the wind in place of the normal bellows, making them capable of totally automatic playing; but the music is still produced from real organ pipes.

           Build-It-Yourself

If you have some practical skills, it is possible to build your own street organ, either from plans or by buying a kit.  Many people have successfully built their own organs in this way.  By far the most popular self-build organ is the John Smith Busker Organ.  This plays 20-note music on paper rolls.  John also sells plans for a more advanced 26-note model.  These organs have been specially designed to be built by the home constructor, needing no special skills and using readily-available materials.  More information about the John Smith organs can be found on this John Smith web site.  Another option is to build from a kit of parts.  At present there is only one supplier of a kit-built organ, and that is Castlewood Organs in Australia.  They supply a complete kit to build a 20-note roll-playing organ, which plays the same music as the John Smith organ.  More details can be found on the Castlewood web site.