castlewood organ kit

castlewood organ kit
I`ve just been on the Castlewood organ site and priced one of there 20 note kits. £753.96 for the kit with insurance and postage, £24.12 duty and £136.16 of the good old vat. giving a grand total of £914.24. Is it me or does this seem a bit pricey for a kit? Pete

Hi, It's a shame about the duty & VAT which adds a lot. You could buy a fair bit of music with that money ! Have they always been that price, or have they gone up ? In comparison it seems dear to the Teanola. I am a proud owner of two of these now ! The first was a ready built one, the 2nd a kit version. Ready built is only £995 & kit was only £695. I have to applaud the machining and finish on the Teanola, it's superb and so easy to build. It only took me (a diy novice :lol: ) 4 days to make and that was allowing time for glue / varnish to dry :org: . You can find the kits here http://www.teanola.com/teanola-self-build-kits.htm It's a different sound to the pipes in the castlewood as those are reeds, but it makes a refreshing change and still very pleasing. No tuning to do either as they are fixed ! all the best Jay.

castlewood organ kit
Hi Jay, is the music very expensive for the Teanola ? Pete

Hi Pete, I don't think so. A few tunes I had recently cost : Anvil Chorus £16.61 Juli Serenade £16.61 La Paloma £26.30 Merry Widow Waltz £33.20 Radetsky March £35.99 It will depend on how long the tune lasts, the longer = more card, more money. You can easily buy as much as the organ's worth ! But I suppose that's the same for a roll organ :shock: N J Dean & Co (email nick @ njdean . co . uk ) will punch your own tunes on his card if you email him a midi file for it though. :D best, Jay

castlewood organ kit
Many thanks Jay, does Melvyn Wright produce any music for the organ? Pete

I will not speak against the Castlewood kit. I have seen several nice organs built from them. On talking to the owner/builders of them, I have gotten the impression that they spent a lot more time in assembling the kits than I spent building a Smith Senior 20 from the plans. I know I only spent about US $ 250 or so on materials and plans, so, at the American price of $995 for the Castlewood kit (possibly not current) my Smith organ cost a whole lot less than the "almost Smith" Castlewood. You would develop more confidence in your ability to repair your organ, a lot more understanding of organs (I think) and a more exagerated pride of ownership if you built from plans. In the UK there is a lot of good support from fellow builders available.

It might be worth contacting Peter Hood at Rollcutter.com as I think he also supplies castlewood Kits - I know they're mentioned on his website. Might at least be able to save yourself the duty. hope this is of help Heather

In June I said"... so, at the American price of $995 for the Castlewood kit (possibly not current) my Smith organ cost a whole lot less than the "almost Smith" Castlewood. At a COAA rally a few week ago I learned that the American kit price has risen to $1200-1300, (about £850 when you add 17% VAT) Still, with the John Smith Senior Organ Plans and Video priced at £39.00 from Roll Cutter, and material costs of only £100 to 200 .....

I think you're assuming the value of tools and the acquired skills to use them at zero in this particular costing model. I'm sure John would assure you that his plan can be built using only a second-hand butter knife (and John could undoubtedly do it!), but most of the rest of us would employ hundreds to perhaps thousands of dollars or pounds of tools, at least a few square meters of shop space, and most importantly, some amount of woodworking experience to building an organ from scratch. For anyone with the desire but too much uncertainty about the skills a kit can cross the activation energy to move from thinking to doing, and that's worth a lot. Time can also factor in. I have the tools and the skills to build almost anything out of wood, but time is at an absolute premium. Having a kit I could assemble in odd moments over the course of a month to give me an organ I'm happy to have grubby-handed kids crank away on was well worth a little extra money vs what would easily have been a six-month project of building from scratch. I look forward to scratch building once I get rid of this pesky day job, but for the moment I'm very happy with my Castlewood and think it was a fair deal for what I paid (admittedly a lot less than it costs now--I was in the first batch of kits). Given the engineering that went into the kit I can't imagine that Tom will ever turn an actual profit on the venture. Cheers, Roger

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