Organ bellows

[Soubasse]

You mean a stiff drink then a ladder, surely? That sounds like quite a deep gallery if there's that much space between the gallery floor and the ceiling below (sounds strange saying it like that).

The blower on the dear old, VERY sorerly missed Walker at the cathedral was two floors beneath the gallery in an underground crypt. We had big problems with it because water kept getting in and the blower would behave very intermittently. The wind up time would get longer and we'd sometimes have to wait up to a minute for the bellows to properly inflate before we could play it. Was worth it though, it was such a lovely instrument to play and to hear despite its problems.

[Contratrombone64]

This space between the gallery and floor (ceiling) below it is not high, probably about five foot only, so would require much crouching, which I am certainly NOT good at ...

[AllanP]

Organ wind regulators (wind chest) have a valve attached to the top of the regualtor. As the lid rises, the valve cuts off the wind from the blower. When the organ is played, the wind pressure drops slightly, the regualtor top drops a little, and the valvr to the blower opens allowing more air to enter the regulator. Weights and/or springs are used to set the force required to raise the top of the regulator and thus the wind pressure required. By this means, the wind pressure to the pipes is maintained at a constant value to keep the pitch and volume constant as more or fewer stops are used.

Judicious use of the tremulants on a theatre organ tend to make a few pipes sound like a bigger organ. Some theatre organ afficionados like the tremulants set to cause large pitch excursions making the pitch of the tone indeterminate. My organ has the tremulants set roughly half way between an extreme theatre organ tremulant and a classical organ tremulant allowing one to play any type of music. An extreme tremulant setting will cause the pitch excursion to be non-symmetric which means that the tuning with tremulants off is different from tremulants on. The type of sound produced is objectionable to some and makes the rank unusable with the tremulants off.

Allan

[Contratrombone64]

G'day Allan, really nice to see you ... it's been far too long!

Thanks for your input, excellently explained so that even a dullard like me can understand it.

[FinnViking]

I recommend everyone interested in the inner life of organs take look at the catalogues of Aug. Laukhuff GmbH: http://www.laukhuff.de/en/organbuilding/products.html

There you'll get a glimpse of what weird parts lie hidden in an organ.