Organ Update - December 2023

Since the last update, a full day (until midnight if I recall correctly) was spent winding the remaining percussions and traps. Some additional wiring was needed for the crash cymbal, tap/roll cymbal and tambourine. A last minute “we should do this too” connection was the hi-hat. It was a long day but much was accomplished! After things were alive, a “short list” of things to fix was made with t-minus four days to go before our concert. When the fire gong and wood block pneumatics were re-leathered previously, there wasn’t enough leather put onto the secondaries, so they inflated but didn’t travel far enough to strike either the sheet of brass for the fire gong or the wood block. Releathering those proved very difficult as the wrong type of glue was used. One pneumatic took me over an hour to get the old stuff off and wood prepared for the new leather.

With those things working, the next thing I focused on was to make the sleigh bells work better (this is the season for those afterall!). Many needed valve adjustments and just about all needed new armatures (the old ones were very dirty). While I was this far in, all magnet caps were removed, port holes milled (to make them smooth) and all new armatures installed.

Finally, reiteration contacts were wired in for the fire gong, castanets and tambourine. Although the sleigh bells have reiteration contacts on the action, I chose to use Uniflex to make these notes reiterate. Through the software, custom reiteration pulse timing can be set per note. Lower notes are pulsed longer, whereas higher notes are pulsed faster. Another plug for Uniflex!

On December 9th, we welcomed 67 people for our second annual Christmas concert featuring Zach Frame at the console. Special thanks to Mike Jacklin and our neighbors, the Leep’s, for borrowing us padded folding chairs. To fit that many chairs in, we removed all the furniture in the music room, dining room table and pushed our large couch across the room. We were overwhelmed with the amount of food that was brought. At the end of the night, we were left with an entire island filled with various dishes. Thanks to everyone who brought something!

What has become a tradition is the creation of an eCard consisting of a video recording of one of the songs played. Here is a link to this year’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtnFy4mNck​

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