John Smith Organs - Topsy 3 Plans

As Topsy 3 represents a major advance in the design of a small portable organ, it is only fitting that the standard of the package supplied for its construction should also be much more sophisticated. As can be seen from the adjacent illustration, the building instructions are supplied in a spiral-bound folder, as are the constructional drawings. Separate folders have been used so that references to drawings, associated text and the DVD can be made at the same time, without having to flip between sections. Everything has been professionally printed, to make both text and illustrations easy to read.

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Considerable effort has been expended on making the constructional details as clear, logical and easy-to-follow as possible.  Clicking here will (slowly!) open up a .pdf file showing a sample section of the text (use your browser's Back button to return to this page).   The whole publication is much larger than those in previous packages, so you will see that a contents page has been  included - to ease navigation through the 90 pages of text and drawings.

As shown on the contents page, there is a considerable amount of information provided over and above that needed for making Topsy 3 itself. Details are provided for 20/32/42/52 note versions, and to enable a larger organ to be constructed, with references to John's own 'Juliana' 98 Key MIDI dance organ - which lives in a small converted caravan.

There is also a section entirely devoted to circuits for including Registers to control sections of pipes, with many innovative ideas.  It is worth pointing out that these designs are not specific to Topsy 3, and that they may be suitable for use in any MIDI organ. Each circuit is printed adjacent to its associated text - again to ease the task of cross-referencing.

Buyers of the Topsy 3 Plans will also receive an emailed accessory pack.    This includes sample midi files  from Alan Pell and Melvyn Wright, plus others files for setting up and testing,  as well as music lists

It would be fair to say that these plans represent a major step forward from the other much simpler versions for previous organs.

Corrections

With a publication of this size, despite being scanned dozens of times, it is still possible for a few errors to creep in.   As these become known, corrections will be listed here: 

Fig 12 on Page 59
As pointed out by Harold M. Whipps Sr, the drivers in the bottom right-hand corner of the diagram were all incorrectly identified as IC4B with pins 2 and 17.
They should be as shown:

# 7, Accompaniment Windchest,  in Construction Drawings
As pointed out by David Seager, the offset for the lower A pipe is shown as 1.25".
It should be 1.75" - to place the pipe in the centre of the available space.

Scales for John Smith Topsy 3, page 25
As pointed out by Bill Klinger, the octave numbers beside each of the A notes should be disregarded completely (my editor got confused!)

MIDI Set-up files
There are a couple of errors in the MIDI set-up files supplied before August 2010, so please send an e-mail to request corrected copies - which will also include extra tuning files