I was in 3rd grade, which would put this about 1974/75 when I first stepped up into the choir loft at my home church. I was part of the children's choir under our elementary school principal. I remember standing against the front wall of the big pipe organ as she navigated the console and it's keyboards/stops in front of us during mass. I became instantly fascinated. This repeated a few times and I always looked with excitement when this was about to happen again. I moved away with my family a year or so later.
Now fast forward to about 1987/1988. I was back in that church and heard that the organ had been either fixed or replaced. Well that got my attention, so I tried during mass (I was sitting under the loft) to figure out whether the sound appeared to be that of a pipe organ or an electronic organ. At first I was having some difficulty determining. It was during the walk back from Communion that I looked up and was relieved that the instrument I knew was still in place and playing well. I rejoined the adult choir and was kind of teleported back to those earlier times. The only difference was that the console had moved to the edge of the loft.
Not too far away in about the same time period I found myself in my college chapel praying for success in a Qualitative Analysis Chemistry exam (that's a whole other story as at that time I had none of the prerequisites of that program). As I was praying I heard swear words wafting down (!!) from the choir loft. I became naturally curious (!!) about what was going on up there, so I decided to walk up one of the side staircases and find out.
When I finally got up there (3rd floor!) I found that the organ console was in disarray and a man was there who kind of got a bit surprised by my presence. We made introductions and it turned out he was the organ builder that was renovating the instrument at the college by replacing what is called "The Relay" which does the linkage between the keys and the valves of the wind chests. It had been the original that was fraught with problems from blown pouches to pitted connections. Only every other note played -- at best.
He had gotten frustrated because with the new system there was only 3 wires between the console and the pipes instead of one for each note. It wasn't working. I determined he had two of them reversed (clock and sync) and on fixing there was some elemental function.
At that point he made an offer to give me more work -- if I was interested. Of course I jumped at the chance and we ended up finishing up not only that work, but also installing a 2nd console (my idea) down front of the chapel that could play the organ from down there.
During that time I learned he had done the work on the church's organ as well. I even had one occasion to make a service call for him. It had been struck by lightning and when I examined it, found that you could see through half of the chips on the driver panel under the pipes.
I came back in 2011 for a visit from Germany after buying a historic home in town to find out that the organ at the church was no longer in use. It was a very long and painful story (and much of this I had to put together from multiple sources). It was a perfect storm of a lot of misinformation and from this the decision was made to remove the instrument.
I came back in 2016 with the understanding that the organ was lost, however after a visit to the school where I had gone now 40 years prior, I learned part of the organ "The Works" we shall call it not only survived, but was in the church Basement! I inspected what was there and made an offer to buy those pieces. It turned out that it was the complete instrument from the floor to where the pipes would have been installed. The church opted to keep the oak skirting for something else.
On a rainy day in late 2016 I took delivery on what was left that I couldn't get in my own small SUV
I started sorting and cataloging what I had received. There was even a coffee can full of all the screws that came out. A job change had me move to Indianapolis and eventually all these items had to be moved to my new location in Indianapolis. I ended up taking over the two car garage with the house I was renting and making it into a makeshift shop.
At this point I started putting all of the assemblies back together again. It took time because there was no documentation, nor was there any kinds of plans. I had through trial and error most of the major pieces put back together again.
Here in this picture (clockwise from top left) Individual chests laid out side-by-side; Assembled air manifold; assembled chests; chests with channel boards (small boards in between) and attached air intake manifold; Wind reservoir with wooden trunk (attaches to manifold box); top boards with electric valves; small historical notice of a competing organ company that redid the leather in 1939 about 27 years after the organ was installed.
Normally the chest would mount up about 8 feet above ground with the channel box attaching to the wooden trunk. I didn't have the framing or the height to make that happen. Future project.
Here is the "bottom" or the instrument, the Pedal Pipes, which originally were on both sides of the original case. There are two such chests with pipes , only one shown here. The smaller chest in the left-most photo was an extension of a stop from the keyboards. It's also visible on the other photo in front, without any pipes on it. The metal pipes come from a stock of pipes I have been accumulating over the last 12 years. So even though the original pipes have been lost, I have enough to make the instrument play again.
After putting all the pieces back together into larger subassemblies for later installation, I came to the conclusion that: One, I would probably build new single chest boxes and mount the top boards on top of them rather than try to coble the original pneumatic chests [which was done because the organ wasn't going to be removed]. This will give a better air-seal and more durability. What is missing at this point is the framing lumber and main wind line to attach to the primary side of the wind reservoirs. Those will be done with PVC (commonly used in the industry today). Framing is usually premium void-free pine lumber (IE: no knots).
Final point is that after going through everything, I could find NO FAULT with the electronics. What caused the massive failure (where the pipes all played at once) was due most likely to a partially disconnected cable dislodged when they moved the console (50 connector phone connector). I will not be using that relay, but rather a newer technology that will be going into my current church's Casavant Organ.
Stay tuned for more on this project...
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