It seems I was mistaken about the compatibility of the Goeckel 20-note
organs and offer my apologies.  My experience had been with the 26er
organ and now I wonder if I'm even correct about that.  Until the
recent popularity of the John Smith 26-note busker organs, the scale
was rarely seen.  There are 26-note rolls available from at least two
sources that could very well be compatible.

As Ed Schmidt mentioned the Goeckel kit organ, I want to head off the
flood of questions on this subject that will surely appear as there
is still a great deal of interest in building organs from kits.

At a festival in the 1980s I happened to meet Werner Baus, who was
offering a 26-note kit organ, and I decided to give it a try.  This
was the beginning of a very long and frustrating story, the short
version of which follows.

I eventually learned that my kit was to come from the Goeckel factory,
which fortunately was a relatively short drive from my home.  I was in
the US Air Force stationed at Ramstein at the time.  The "kit" turned
out to be several big boxes of parts and raw material thrown together
from off-the-shelf stock, several pages of hand-written instructions
(in German) and drawings produced by the person who built kit #1 (who
obviously was not qualified to produce these instructions).

Mine was kit #2 and I believe the last.  The kit was not even close
to being ready for marketing, and I had the distinct impression that
Martin Goeckel was not happy that one had been sold to me.

As I had paid my money to Baus there was really no choice but to
proceed.  I found someone to translate the instructions to English
and began the building process that amounted to working until I was
stumped, driving to the factory to learn that the original instructions
contained some serious error, and working again until I hit another
brick wall.  I believe this sequence was repeated about four times.

I should mention that Martin Goeckel was very patient with me and gave
me a lot of his time.  I always suspected he did not receive a great
deal of the money I paid, but we worked together to make the best of
a bad deal for both if us.  Looking back almost 20 years, I must admit
that I learned a tremendous amount from the project and I value the
memories.

From looking at the web site of the modern firm, Orgelbau Goeckel,
it doesn't appear that they are making crank organs these days and
I certainly doubt that any more "kits" were produced or sold.  If this
is incorrect I would be very interested in sharing stories with anyone
who built one.

Hal O'Rourke