John Smith Organs

On this website you will find details of the various organs that John has designed, and how to obtain packages that will enable you to build your own instrument.   

The buttons at the top of each page enable you to navigate around the site, but if this is your first visit, you may like to start by clicking on the 'History' button to find out how John Smith created a world of home-made small mechanical organs.

Other buttons - Busker, Senior 20, Universal, Topsy 1, Topsy 3 - will take you to pages with details about the organs themselves - so you can decide which one you might like to build - or to the Ordering page when you have decided.   The 'Accessories' button brings up a page giving details of a punch for making paper rolls, and a booklet about arranging music oneself.   The button 'FAQ' takes you to pages giving the answers to 'Frequently Asked Questions'.

There is also a button which will enable you to select videos stored on YouTube which show the organs actually playing, and a buttton marked 'Outings', which shows places where John may have his organs on display.     Finally there is a button for a Links page, where you can find web pages for suppliers of parts and music for John's organs, pages created by people who have constructed John's organs, and other pages devoted to different aspects of the fascinating world of small - and large - organs.

To clear up some common misconceptions, these pages are devoted to 'organs' - that is, instruments with pipes that sound when air is blown through them, just like a church organ, but a lot smaller!   'Barrel Organs' were a common sight years ago, and some did contain air-blown pipes, but the majority of these were actually very large versions of a musical box - as revealed by the 'metallic' sounds that they produced.   Another name sometimes wrongly applied to Busker organs is 'Hurdy Gurdy'.   This is actually a mechanical violin, where a rotating wheel takes the place of a bow, and notes can be sounded by operating keys to press the violin strings onto the wheel.