Restoring the Casavant Pipe Organ -- Part 1 -- Introduction

This is part one of a multi-part article highlighting the restoration and improvement of our Casavant Pipe Organ from 1951.

Our church where I am presently living has a rather neglected Casavant (French Canadian) Pipe organ.  This company is very old and respected in North America, as well as one of the very few survivors from the grand days of the pipe organ (Schantz, Reuter, Schoenstein and Casavant are the last ones).

The organ was installed when the church was built in 1951.  The instrument falls into the category of "Unit Organ" which were general small instruments that did the very basics for worship support, but really weren't able to be used for any kind of recital purposes.   Ours has 4 keyboard stops and a single pedal stop.  About 20-30 years ago it fell into disuse and started to have mechanical issues commensurate with an instrument of the age and seldom use. 

The organ was from the post-WWII era when a lot of newer technologies were being tried out.  One of these was the plastic (rather than ivory) stop controls.  The technology really wasn't proven well and over time they have started to literally disintegrate (little pieces fall off when you touch them).  Internally though the leather valves are in very fine shape, as are the keyboard contacts.  However the relay is only half there. 

Here is a demo video from before the restoration work got under way.

So my idea was to design a new relay using a Raspberry PI and a lot of custom circuitry to do what was done on a large 4x8' board on the organ from my own church to make it play again and give modern features.

An organ builder friend of mine (not the one that I initially came into contact with [RIP])  advised me that I would have to replace all of the cotton covered wire as part of the upgrade because of the electrical code, so I added this to the list.  It's enameled wire that is used for winding motors, but is also used currently in the organ building trade. 

I obtained the services of the organ builder who built the massive organ at Old St. Mary's in Detroit in the late 80's to come and tune this instrument (since I also have been practicing on it) and I told him what I had in mind.   It was all good until the point where I mentioned about "rolling my own."  He gave good reasons about using a "supplier relay" from the support perspective and all.   So I asked for a suggestion and he gave me one.

I reached out to the guy who owned that company and as fate would have it, he was looking for somebody to take over his business.  Our timelines kind of matched up for when I want to complete my tenure in Corporate IT and when he wants to retire.  We also had total agreement on the next generation in this technology (he started in this business back in 1985).   So it turned out my design (for the CPU) will marry his well proven technology.  So instead of coming up with a Hardware AND Software solution, I am just coming up with a Software solution on his platform (with slight modifications to allow the Raspberry PI to interface).   Best of both worlds.

Here is the last video that was made (after the tuning of the Casavant) before the work began. Dave Wigton (the builder of the one in Detroit) is at the helm.  This is only half the stops available (a flute and the principle) and during the tuning we found out that they were not even regulated, so we expect in that process (I do the mechanicals, I will leave the tonal aspects/console modifications to the master) to have an instrument that will truly fill the church.

At present I am rewiring the pouch boards, removing the cotton covered wire and replacing with the enamel wiring.   A separate article will follow that highlights this project.