I am a gadfly. A flibbety-gibbet. A floosie. I have abandoned my old console in favour of a new model.

It wasn’t planned, but when it popped up on eBay, I knew it was too good an opportunity to pass up. This little beauty travelled all they way from Devonshire to Norfolk this week. It is extraordinarily heavy, and the movers did a sterling job (which, once again, involved taking the front door off).

Much as I love the old console, it was becoming increasingly apparent that it would not be easy to modify it to do the things I need it to do. The toe-pistons being the most obdurate sticking-point. You will observe that the new console has toe pistons in abundance (21, in fact). It also has drawstops. Yes, they are actual, genuine, functional Kimber Allen mini drawstops.

The old console has been sold, and will be collected sometime next week, but in the meantime I have started to do a little bit of stripping out. In actual fact, very little of the work that I have done so far will need to be re-done on the new console, apart from putting in the pedal reed switches again. Almost everything else that I have done has been confined to the manuals, which will be transferred into the new console.

I have started to put things on eBay, and hopefully I will recoup some of the cost (£637, including transport) by doing that. So far, the external speaker cabinet and two (!) Quad amps are up for sale. Mr Norwich Organs has been round, examined the console and pronounced it a good purchase, and has also put in claims on a few of the components. The manuals will hit eBay in a week or so, too.

The main thing I need to think about is how to put in the stops for the solo division. This will need to be a touchscreen. I have some ideas, but I need to think about it. That is for the future, though.