Tiny Pipe Organ Needs Tiny Church

There are a lot of unusual listings on eBay. If you’re wondering why someone would have a need for shredded cash, or a switchblade comb, or some “unicorn meat” (whatever that is), we’re honestly wondering the same thing. Sometimes, though, a listing that most people would consider bizarre finds its way to the workbench of someone with a little imagination. That was the case when [tinkartank] found three pipe organ pipes on eBay, bought them, and then built his own drivers.

The pipes have pitches of C, D, and F# (which make, as far we can tell, a C add9 flat5 no3 chord). [tinkartank] started by firing up the CNC machine and creating an enclosure to mount the pipes to. He added a church-like embellishment to the front window, and then started working on the controls for the pipes. Each pipe has its own fan, each salvaged from a hot air gun. The three are controlled with an Arduino. [tinkartank] notes that the fan noise is audible over the pipes, but there does seem to be an adequate amount of air going to each pipe.

This project is a good start towards a fully functional organ, provided [tinkartank] gets lucky enough to find the rest of the pipes from the organ. He’s already dreaming about building a full-sized organ of sorts, but in the meantime it might be interesting to use his existing pipes to build something from Myst.

29 thoughts on “Tiny Pipe Organ Needs Tiny Church

  1. Cool! reminds me of the 4 meter long organ pipes my Mum & Dad had on the wall of their home. They were just decorative but sometimes we hooked up a vacuum cleaner to blow them. My parents also had a hand built wooden cabinet organ that’s now sitting proudly in my living room. Nothing beats a pipe organ for real analog sounds that’ll blow your pants off.

  2. The proper speach of the pipes won’t happen with the fan ramp up. Tilting solinoid valves are normaly used with a regulated supply of wind. It shouldn’t be hard to get a set of pipes. We have several and so do many music stores that deal in pipe organ work.
    Contemporary Christian music is trashing the liturigical music heritage. Anthems of advert jingles and worse. Seems Satan’s work in is carying all of man’s desires into the church. Rock and roll, get your yaa yaas out.

    1. Well, religious or not, there’s something to be said about baroque music. If the Vulcans had music, that’s what it would be. It can be almost algorithmic in its construction.

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