Thursday, October 11, 2012

Pipe Organ Repairs

 
Exterior and interior view

I was asked to fix a 'broken key' on this two-storey high beauty.

The Specs.
Built in 1870 in England by P.C. Conacher it has three keyboards each with 56 notes and the pedal board contains 30 notes. There are 17 speaking stops, 5 couplers and a total of 986 pipes. The largest pipes are approximately 8 feet long and the smallest pipes are about one half inch.
It was built to an older design and even though an electric pump had been added, the original hand operated bellows where still intact and operable.
End specs.

Spent the afternoon in Chris' Heaven, scrabbling about inside figuring out which bits did what, when, where and how; with a big silly grin on my face the whole time. I found and repaired the connection on the key that was broken.

Having fixed the key, had to test it - stretched both my index fingers in preparation, took a deep breath, depressed a low E key, slowly wound the volume up to full and belted out that immortal riff by Deep Purple.............. Smoke on The Water.......sounded absolutely brilliant.