1885 C.F Netzow Eastlake Pump Organ

[tyler1256f]

My grandfather picked up this Organ awhile back and I was hoping to learn more about it for him. All that I know is that it reads it is a C.F. Netzow Eastlake Pump Organ with a date marked July 1885. It also reads Milwaulkie on it. Can anyone help me to know more information about it, and if it has any known value to a classical organ collector? Any information would be greatly appreciated !

[Silken Path]

Hi, Tyler - Welcome to the forum. (We welcome all reed organ users and abusers.) :)

It's really hard to say what the the value of an old reed organ is. Basically, it's whatever somebody will pay for it. I can tell you that I bought the 1899 Kimball linked in my sig below for $100 and it was and is playable. (Honked on it some this morning, in fact.) Reed organs don't tend to price out like other antiques. Experienced reed organ shoppers look at one and see the liabilities that have to be overcome in order to derive the benefits, and sometimes you can see the old style cash register ("ka-CHING!") racking up additional costs in their eyes.

It looks like the pedals are up. Can you pump it up? If you pump it up, pull out a stop, and then stop pumping, does the sound still play for several seconds? The stops on the organ, by the way are in mirror image pairs. Pull the second one from the left out and the second one from the right out, and you'll have a full keyboard to play. You can then determine what notes and stops are working and see if it will need more work.

For more pictures of these organs, go to this website: http://www.reedsoc.org/

Click on "ROS Database" in the the left-hand menu and enter "Netzow" in the search field and you'll see several parlor models. You may even find IT if a previous owner registered it.

That "Repairing Reed Organs" link on the left goes to the "Aunt Maude" article. It's a good general discussion about repairing reed organs of all types.

A more experienced member of the forum said a while back that he's been given fine organs for free and paid $300 for junk. The discussion was about upmarket models, but that stuck with me. I'd like to avoid $300 for junk. I hope your grandfather paid a reasonable price for it. (It does look nicely complete.)

By the way, an easy way to correct the rotation of pictures, if you use a Windows PC, is to open the images in Windows Photo Viewer (yes, it's still there in Windows then) and then use the rotate arrows, go to the next image, rotate it, etc. It'll save the rotated state each time you change images. My iPhone does the same batty thing, and it's SO annoying...