Not of interest even to me, I’ve seen him plenty 
Yeah, that’s Adri, the maker. I didn’t bother linking to her site, but there you have it, more pictures of recorderzilla and the maker. She visited the VH shop while I was there, seemed like a nice woman.
Loren
Frightening . . . Truly Frightening . . . 
Exactly so.
I must admit a special fondness for bass recorders. I had one which I wasn’t playing much anymore so I put it up on eBay. A woman in Michigan bought it, and today she’s my wife! Really! The bass now hangs proudly in our living room.. 
RICOLAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Geeze, talk about seller’s remorse!
Loren
Wow!
you know, perhaps one could make a whole lot of these things and bunch them all together and have just tubes going to a bunch of folks who play them at the right time … nah, that would require the whole crew to be there all the time - maybe use some kind of valve system with one person puffing and working the valves … I know! perhaps the valves could be wired-up to a piano style keyboard! Better yet - instead of puffing, one could use a couple of big Uilleann-pipe bellows to puff!
What would we call such a contraption? “Whistletron”, “Whistleodeon”, “Whist-amin” ?
Most of you won’t care but…
The reason the Dolmetsch Millenium basses (and the Paetzolds) are made that way is that it’s much less expensive than turning something that large out of a single piece of wood. They make such instruments relatively affordable.
And yes, they are generally used in small chamber ensembles.
I don’t know what to say about Adriana’s big instrument either…that picture has been around for some time. She’s been collaborating with Mollenhauer of late on rather more normal-sized recorders.
Paul - interesting story about your bass. My wife and I share a Dolmetsch Nova bass, though she is using it less and less as she’s getting more and more into Celtic harp…but we’d been together for quite awhile before we got it.
And they are made of plywood to boot. They’re mostly easy to maintain instruments, and are fairly durable. Pads and gaskets are the usual suspects when problems occur, the gaskets being somewhat of a pain in the butt to replace if you have to cut your own. I always disliked working on the ones that came into the shop, because it meant I was going to be spending part of my day cutting open centered squares, and punching out circles from adhesive backed foam. Nearly as much fun as turning toothpicks to plug holes in boxwood instrument bodies…
At anyrate, the boxy recorders certainly fill a spot in the marketplace.
Loren
for the lunatic fringe
http://www.contrabass.com/
How’s about “Recorder-geddon”?