Hi Jody, hi Hal,

As to your request for the Hofbauer-Organ I will state information
I have collected in the past.

The primary source is a German magazine called

    Mechanische Orgelwelt aktuell  (Mechanical Organ World News)
    Eine Zeitung fuer die Freunde der modernen Mechanischen Musik
    A newspaper for friends of modern mechanical music)

I got two issues last week from a Viennese Hofbauer-organ-player,
but nowhere you can find an address to order or where does it come
from (maybe Walter Tenten or Horst Mohr, member of this group, can
tell more about this magazine); to me it seems like a commercial for

    Orgelbaumeister Hofbauer GmbH
    Postfach 2317
    D-37013 Goettingen
    Tel. 0551/71001 - Fax 0551/7703351

but there are parts of some articles which sound very interesting.

Carl-Heinz Hofbauer, who is now 68 years old, presented in 1977 at
the music fair at Frankfurt/Main, Germany, a 2-manual pipe-organ
with electronic control of electromagnetic valves. (Robbie: the
storage battery there has a small capacity and is only to supply the
electronic circuits and valves - you have to produce air-pressure
with your own muscles).

They offer pipe-organs with a so-called control-system "Mikrobox
2000", and in the list of May 1995 the price range is (keys/pipes):

•        20er/36 Mikrobox-Orgel "Harmonipan"
          with melody-register >Magic Flute 8'<            DM  9.200
          see German article below

        26er/48 as above + >Violine 4'< - switchable       DM 12.985

        ...

        38er/76 as above + percussion                      DM 25.970
        (Pauke, Becken, Trommelwirbel,
         Holzblock, Zimbal, Hi-hat, Crash)
        (kettledrum, cymbals, reiterating snare drum,
         wood-block, cymbal, hi-hat, Crash cymbal)

        54er/96 Mikrobox-Trompetenorgel (trumpet-organ)
          with 5 switchable melody-registers + bass        DM 47.500

•Very interesting is a product called

•        20er  Tanzbaer (dancing bear) with
          Mikrobox-control + 2 registers                   DM  3.980

        40er    Tanzbaer                                   DM  5.920

•I never heard it, but as to a picture it looks like an accordion
with a small number of keys (about 10 only).  A Tanzbaer player is
announced for this MEMUSI 96 [the forthcoming Fair Organ Convention
in Vienna]; I will make a report then. (Below you can find extracts
of a German article ).

There is included a Standard-Mikrobox with 100 songs and they claim
a catalog with more than 1000 tunes with prices of DM 150 - 250
each.

You have to imagine a box in the size of a video tape with a
connector of about 50 pins, containing a memory called EPROM
(electrically programmable read-only-memory). There is a bus on the
mainboard - I think control is done there with an 8bit-CPU - and you
can insert various boxes in about 10 slots. On top of the organ is a
"keyboard" where you can select titles to play and also a knob (on a
potentiometer) to regulate the tempo of the tune (yes, with the
crank you make air-pressure only!)

There is a possibility to connect the organs together for an
'orchestra' with a simple 2-wire-cable (the company claims more than
45 organs in a line, but they do not give a more detailed
information). The 'alphabet' of the stored songs is incompatible
with Midi, which means you have to employ Hofbauer to store your own
music there (prices are unknown, but I have heard about Alexander
Kubelka, a composer and arranger, now performing with the "Wiener
Ensemble" at "Theater an der Josefstadt", that he had to go to
Goettingen to supervise the productions of his EPROMs (music he
needs for his production to perform on a 38er-Hofbauer) ).

On the other side, last year I saw a player controlling his
Hofbauer-organ with a floppy disk player (Roland Brush?).  This year
I will try to meet the player and find out more (maybe he has a
modified electronics inside his organ capable of playing standard-
Midi songs).

At least you can find an article comparing Mikrobox-control with
other systems (due to time limitations also in German).  [The
translation of the literature from Claus follows. -- Robbie]

Servus!

Claus Kucher