transporting reed organ

[Joseph O'Brien]

I just bought an old Weaver reed organ that I need to transport from
the antique shop across town to my 2nd floor condo. It's in pretty
good condition from what I can tell; it's musically, cosmetically, and
mechanically sound. Aside from a little dust, there doesn't appear to
be anything on the inside that would rattle around if shaken a bit..

My plan is to get an appliance dollie, a few friends, and a cavernous
van to haul this thing away. However, I wanted to make sure that
tilting it up on its side and pulling it up a flight of stairs (only a
gentle thump, thump, thump) wouldn't cause any harm. I know very
little about reed organs, so if someone out there who has worked with
them a bit can give me some advice (i.e., Never tilt a reed organ on
its side!) I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
joseph

[bruce]

In general, the move you describe won't cause any problems at all,
unless the structural integrity of the organ frame has already been
compromised in some way. Easy test: as it sits, try pushing and
pulling on one end of the organ. If the whole frame "parallelograms"
badly, you need to stabilize it before trying to move it. This can
be as simple a screwing a sheet of plywood to the back of the organ
to make the whole thing rigid.

Hmmm... I'll bet this note gets caught by a lot of spam filters
because of that last sentence ;-)

Tipping and the gentle thumping of moving up a flight of stairs should
cause no problems. The only really delicate parts are the reeds, and
they are surrounded by so much other well attached hardware that you'd
have to drop the whole thing down the stairs to hurt them. Maybe more
than once. For moving it up the stairs, pushing is better than pulling.
Pulling tends to tear things apart (don't ask me how I know this, but
has something to do with the antique desk I got from my grandmother).
Pushing tends to just squeeze things together more tightly.

Once you get it where you want it, visit the Reed Organ Society page
http://www.reedsoc.org for more than you ever wanted to know. There
is a thorough description of how to overhaul one of these beasts (if
necessary) at http://www.reedsoc.org/RepairV2/GenericApproach.htm
Keep this link (or print out the pages and save them). Sooner or
later you will need this information, as there are NO reed organ
repairmen left, to speak of, and it's pretty easy to service your
organ yourself if you have an idea ahead of time what you're getting
into.

Enjoy your new toy!

Bruce Jamieson