There are hundreds who the trade of organ building is in fine hands.

I just happened on this, as well.

Joseph Trotter They have great suppliers as do most in the organ building industry.

Really excellent demonstration.

Great job Nigel and a unique instrument. Thanks to you and Jack for the time and effort to put this together. Well done!

True. Even the 32' resultant here sounds massive, and compared to a real 32' that's tiny

Shining Armor ... you're assuming that the real 32' you're comparing it to is designed to be big. Most 32' flues are voiced very softly.

Alex Fishburn Contrabasse 32', second loudest 32' in my organ

Shining Armor again, it's a case by case basis, depending on how each individual 32' in each individual organ is voiced. Saying "second largest 32' in my organ" doesn't really prove anything. It's all down to how each installation is voiced. A resultant 32' needs very suitable acoustics to work, and needs a quint rank with very little harmonic content and tuned pure. Most quint stops are derived from a 16' flute, hence why they rarely work properly.

Shining Armor slightly misread your comment at first, sorry!

It does seem like the Theatre Organ was basically the natural evolution of the pipe organ that basically died on the vine, as it were, when silent movies when all talkie. That, and the home-pipe-organ-building-crash after the great depression and WW2, and the development of the electronic organ... Perhaps we're finally back on track to evolve the pipe organ into an even better and more capable instrument as was supposed to happen.

Kyle Swann You better have donors with deep pockets.

Matthew Hume In the case of pipe organs and the regular pulsation of the air, it is both AM and FM modulation

+Rheinlander95 There are 15 unique voices, but there is a lot of "borrowing" in this organ. For example, it appears that just about all the pedal stops are borrowed from other divisions. Therefore you would see the same stop in multilple places.

+Super Awesome All the extracts are now listed above. Thank you for your interest and kind comments.

Leonardo Ferraz Not a synth.

Doing more with less. Yay! It's a refreshing relief from the worst excesses of American civic organ culture.

Nevermind, it's probably the corno dolce

+Shining Armor Bourdon 16'

+Nigel Potts ah! I was wrong

+samueladams7 The reason the large pipes are bent is to retain their speaking length while fitting them in a small area. I.E if the chamber cannot fit a 16 foot pipe the pipe is bent to making it possible to fit the pipe in the small chamber. and some pipes are simply built that way

Quinn Riutta Almost.

samueladams7 There are two types of “bent” pipes. Those at the top are called hooded and helps focus the sound. This is often done with solo tubas and trumpets based on British designs. Other bent pipes, such as those looping around are called “metered.” Mitered pipes are to fit a full length pipe where there isn’t quite the vertical height to do so if they were left unmetered.

There are several cone-shaped, or tapered, pipe ranks found in various pipe organs. I would imagine most except the erzahler, fugara, gemshorn, koppelflote, spillflote, and spitzflute, are actually pretty rare (or unique), but I really don't know, since I know more about theatre organs than classical organs. This encyclopedia is a good resource however. Here are all of the conical or tapered flue ranks I could find in there: www.organstops.org/c/ConeFlute.html www.organstops.org/c/ConeGambaCeleste.html www.organstops.org/c/ConeGedeckt.html www.organstops.org/c/Conoclyte.html www.organstops.org/e/Erzahler.html www.organstops.org/e/ErzahlerCeleste.html www.organstops.org/f/FlautoDoris.html www.organstops.org/f/FluteAFuseau.html www.organstops.org/f/Fugara.html www.organstops.org/g/Gemshorn.html www.organstops.org/g/Gemshornbass.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornCeleste.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornCornet.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornFifteenth.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornGamba.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornMixture.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornOctave.html www.organstops.org/g/Gemshornquinte.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornTwelfth.html www.organstops.org/g/GemshornViolin.html www.organstops.org/g/Gemsrohrflote.html www.organstops.org/h/HarmonicGemshorn.html www.organstops.org/h/Harfpfeife.html www.organstops.org/k/Koppelflote.html www.organstops.org/k/Kurzflote.html www.organstops.org/m/MutedViol.html www.organstops.org/n/NasardAFuseau.html www.organstops.org/p/PyramidFlute.html www.organstops.org/s/Spillflote.html www.organstops.org/s/Spitzflote.html www.organstops.org/s/Spitzgamba.html www.organstops.org/s/Spitzgedeckt.html www.organstops.org/s/Spitzprinzipal.html www.organstops.org/w/WedgeFlute.html (plus also the flue form of the Oboe, invented by Mr. Haskell for the Estey organ company, has a cone or taper on the top, and a few Cornet mixtures found in certain classical organs apparently have tapered pipes). I should mention that certain early cylinder-operated fairground organs frequently had tapering open flute pipes in the melody, almost always made out of wood, which were called "Spitzflutes" by the organbuilders themselves in their catalogues. These were generally found in large (50 to over 100 keys) cabinet-type fairground barrel organs built by German builders like Gebruder Bruder, Wilhelm Bruder Sohne, A. Ruth & Sohn, etc. and usually found in instruments they built before about the 1890s (so, about the 1870s-1880s era). Sometime in the 1890s, Mr. Gavioli's patent on the "frein" or harmonic brake for the mouths of violin pipes, ran out, and thus after this expiration, there was then a free-for-all among European and American fairground organ builders to start using wooden violin pipes in the melody section of their organs, so the wooden spitzflutes gradually (or suddenly) disappeared from new organs around the 1890s, and among fairground organ people, are a sound associated with the older large barrel organs, rather than the 'newer' (1890s-1930s) barrel and book organs.

+Ryan Booth There are no digital stops on this organ. The 32' Resultant is from the 16' Boudon

Usually a resultant is made by playing the fundamental and fifth above it for each "extra low note" wanted. So for example, if one wants G in the 32' octave, but has no pipe long enough to produce it, the 'resultant' stop will be wired to play both the G AND D (above it) pipes in the 16' octave, for each G note played in the bass with the resultant turned on, giving (through sonic illusion) the 'impression' of a 32' octave G tone sounding faintly below the two 16' pipes playing together, even though no 32' rank actually exists. This stop is almost always made (*derived) using a stopped flute rank, like a bourdon. Since the notes are so low, the fifth is maybe not as noticeable as the "resultant" phantom low note, and with a well-scaled and voiced (and tuned!) 16' rank, it 'works'. Of course, this effect doesn't work as well in the higher octaves, nor is it needed, since most organs have actual pipes in the 16' octave and higher literally sounding all those notes, with no illusions needed.

Only the really big organs have actual 32' pipes (usually a large wooden stopped flute whose longest pipes are around 17' long or so... but sometimes a full-length open diapason, string, or even reed like a low trumpet / trombone or something else, whose longest pipes would be indeed over 32' long, accounting for the sounding length PLUS of course the mouth and foot of the pipe which add the 'extra length'). I would say it's probably unusual to find a classical/church/symphonic organ under about 35 or 40 ranks or so with a real 32' stop in it. There were only a relatively few theatre pipe organs built with real 32' stops, as well (Wurlitzer probably made most of those few that were made).

Yes it is. Isn't that considered an undesirable practice? Like Moeller?

darren motise Not really. It completely depends on how it is used. Theatre organs also use the practice. Given what schoenstein charges for an organ its a way to get lots of different colors and variety of sounds without having to pay 5-6 Million for a properly sized orchestral organ. Even still Schoenstein will charge just under 1 million for a small instrument as this... he does like his Rolls Royce...

@Stephen Schmidt It really depends on how the unification is achieved.

+Richard Harrold & Mr Walker... lol

Mike Sole Walker never really mastered the extension organ like Compton did - they did build a lot of small extension jobs but the big instruments were straight - whereas almost all Comptons of any size used a lot of extension as the cornerstone of their tonal structure...

And Compton can thank Hope-Jones

darren motise They are unified stops. In organ building terminology it refers to the number of parent speaking stops. A theater organ can have even fewer ranks and even more stops due to the borrowing and unification. This instrument uses the same principles to increase the versatility. Just because a console has a certain number of “stop knobs” does not mean it has that number of “speaking stops.”

You mean, to the audio recording?

Well it certainly isn't a color reed

It's a solo reed, not a chorus reed. What do you mean by a "colour" reed? I guess the American take on the Tuba could be different, but here in England (where the stop originates) it is certainly a solo reed.

Alex Fishburn In Jack’s context it’s actually a hooded trumpet and not an english tuba. The scale , shallot design, wind pressure, and shape Schoenstein used in this case is definitely not a Tuba as the British know it

@@praestant8 true ☺️

robert shaw really? How do you know?

Trust me, I know. This organ is unusual in that it has a nice sound though unified. Many builders try this and fail miserably. Mr. Bethards is a knowledgable person. One thing we can say - better a unit organ than none at all or - one of those things that use recordings of real organs to make their sound. Pipe organs, regardless of age are never obsolete, like any other musical instrument. But electronic technology is obsolete almost as soon as it is developed.

I think he knows how many stops his organ has. It's borrowed. (unified, which I always thought was a bad thing. Apparently not, I suppose)

You have no idea what you're talking about. They're called digital organs. And the technology they use is called "sampling" and that does not become obsolete. It's been the same for 15 years. And so has speaker and audio system technology. Digital organs are now built to accommodate any changes in scientific improvement.

@@djmotise 15 years? That's a joke, right? How many years has REAL organ tech been around? Audio amplifiers have changed radically with pulse width modulation, etc. When current amp tech like pwm and other hi tech like sampling is obsolete, there will still be wonderful pipes. The notion that current tech won't become obsolete is absurd. R&D labs are still keeping busy applying new science.

darren motise It has been attempted before and has failed each and every time. It is as convincing as reverb on a digital organ in a small dry acoustic. No one is fooled by that trickery. It also doesn’t work with other instruments or voices sharing the dry space. The reality in this day and age with religion is you have one chance... one chance for a responsive room, and one chance for a decent organ. Blow any of those chances and it’s likely the church will be gone before you get a second chance.

I could liven that room right up with lots of bathroom tile everywhere (decorative naturally) and rip up the acoustic killer carpet then put lacquer on everything else! By God we will bump that acoustic up to 7 seconds ! Now I'm having real fun.! If this recording is reflective of the room it is sad that this instrument sounds as dead as a door nail in that space!

Umm is that really important?

@Stephen Schmidt I agree. A very large space with a lot of reverb can indeed be awe-inspiring with a large organ, but also make it very hard for that organ to 'enunciate' crisply due to the reverb being a constant in the room (an acoustical phenomenon- not something one 'turns on and off'). I think both 'crisper' or 'drier' AND 'livelier' or 'wetter' acoustical environments have their place with pipe organs (not to mention live singers, bands and orchestras of all kinds). Frankly, I think the dry environment works well with this particular organ. In a very live room, it can be hard to tell specific details about the actual timbre of certain ranks, since they get "lost" in the room.

Check your speakers, this is just fine.

I also hear everything fine. Check your computer, soundcard, speakers/headphones and also playback of KZfaq in your web browser. Sounds like something might be going wrong on your end.

Also, when you have the pipes of same pitch Trompette 8' from manual and pedal, the scaling will be also different - the pedal trompette will have very large scale, because it has to support the entire sound of organ, but the pipe from manual will be thinner... That can't be done in this organ

Yeah, you've already bragged how you will take a fake organ over a real one. You can keep it and have to replace it for double the cost every ten years. I'll take something modest that was built to last.

+Charles Davis And at a tenth of the quality.

The truth is self-evident... in the ear. CVD

+Charles Davis Over a 100 year period you'd spend more on the Rogers..

Charles Davis I fear you don't detect the Breath of God that fills the pipes so gloriously here.

And you'd have gotten kicked out of the spelling bee if you spelled Rodgers like that. Besides, there are better companies, such as Walker and Allen.

Honestly, the actual setup seems closer to a Theatre Organ, than a traditional church organ.

TheJakeman789 And fake sounds despite how many you have.

All the electronic organ does is to remind you of what you don't actually have.

darren motise Remember that Jack is a business man trying to sell a product to the general public. He came from Proctor-Gamble management as memory serves. He may run an organ building company but it doesn’t mean he’s as conversant as an organist would be. In the case of more romantic literature and transcriptions you have very little in the way of registration directions. Listen to the Elgar recordings of Tom Murray at Wolsey hall. I defy you to tell me the composers directed his registration which changes every few seconds.

You don't always have to follow what is written

Also not all sheet music give registration options