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CTT

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  1. Half drawn stops would be compatible with almost any type of action. If the soundboards were slider soundboards, it would work so long as there was some type of action to drawn one slide out of the slides for that particular stop. I guess one reason for half drawn stops on smaller instruments is that of space for the drawstop knobs. It provides the option for two stops with only one drawstop. With a larger instrument, there would be the space for two individual knobs for exactly the same result. (ie: a Twelfth and Mixture.
  2. I understand that the stop is best heard in the morning for some reason.
  3. No, the third manual is (literally) keys only. Try playing them and you will break your fingers as there is no travel on them at all.
  4. A quick search of the England & Wales BDM Birth Index 1837–1915 lists a William Ralph Driffill, whose birth was registered in Luton, Bedfordshire in the last quarter of 1870.
  5. Researching the life and times of Thomas Casson and the Positive Organ Company, had me looking up a back issue of 'The Organ', (Vol. 1 no. 3 p.183 January 1922). This had a section called 'Echoes from the Past,' that reprinted a Casson letter about the Swell Box from December 1888. This was annotated by someone using the pseudonym Mercurius Urbanus. Does anyone know who this referred too?
  6. The Rotunda article on Wallasey Town Hall was vol1 no.4 page five. Unfortunately the archive copy I have access to starts at page seven.... (Oh the frustration...)
  7. Discovered this old thread via a Google search. There is an instrument in New Zealand that goes by the name the Blitz organ. It is attributed to Willis, and is said to have been made of parts salvaged from bombed instruments around Liverpool and Wallasey, the bulk of it being from the Wallasey Town Hall. (One soundboard converted into two divisions). Prior to the Wallasey Town Hall the instrument was in Leinster House (Royal Dublin Society) and is said to be one of Father Willis's last instruments 1899. There are some photos of the damaged instrument in the Wallasey Town Hall, but no search showing the intact instrument. (In theory this should be linked to posting number 10, but it looks like if technology has outsmarted me yet again)
  8. The same thing has happened here. One of the churches were unable to afford repairs to the whole instrument after the earthquakes, (a 1906 E. H. Jenkin's) so just the facade pipes have been repaired and restored and placed back in position at the front of the old organ chamber. The chamber has been opened up for added space for the congregation, and from what I have heard, musically there will be a digital organ to replace the pipe organ.
  9. Did anyone notice the implications that the deputy was wearing his weapons during a church service... It adds a whole new meaning to the old term muscular Christianity. The only other occasion I recall of something like this happening was a report about three or four years ago when a naked man welding a sword disrupted a Sunday morning service (I think it was in the UK). An off duty policeman took up a front pipe to disarm the man!
  10. If the measures are anything like what we are dealing with down here, the designs may well include the following: Diagonal building frame as well as horizontal and vertical members. Where rack boards are fixed down with rail blocks rather than pillars, there are brackets placed at right angles to avoid the rails snapping along the grain. Pipe stays for any pipe over a Twelfth 2 2/3" long. Half moon stays and brackets for the larger pipes, such as front pipes made T sectional. For pipe only fronts i.e.: with no rails in front of the pipes to prevent them falling forward, the pipes not only have hooks but steel wire lanyards screwed to the pipes and stays to stop them falling away. Ensuring that instruments situated within chambers are braced so that they cannot rock and smash themselves against the walls or roof. Fixing down larger items that would previously relied on gravity and location dowels, as the instruments were thrown upwards and halfway down met the ground coming up, (causing in some places soundboards being thrown off their rails and dowels). It would be interesting to know what other measures are being developed to make organs earthquake resistant.
  11. There was a company in Canada, 'The Compensating Organ Company,' that put out hybrid free reed / organ pipe instruments. The mouths had a sliding top lip also and a mechanism that according to the advertising, "and its special device is claimed to keep pipe and reed in perfect pitch in any temperature." (Unfortunately the only local example got squashed and is in storage awaiting the paperwork for its restoration.) I have a vague memory that the regulation of the rank of pipes (wooden Stopped Diapasons) could be altered also from the console - which would mean that the theory and practice goes back to at least 1901.
  12. Slightly later than the early 1900's, there is the Hill Norman & Beard 1919 example of electro-pneumatic in the Major Bathhurst travelling organ. Of course it was an abnormality in that it was transported from venue to venue, but still showed mastery of the medium. (It was the basis of the Dunedin Town Hall instrument - via Wembley Stadium)
  13. Not for the Exhibition instrument, that was burnt in 1927, and the Melbourne Town Hall was destroyed (also by fire) in 1925. The replacement Town Hall instrument was an HNB - (the starting instrument for the Melbourne branch of HNB). The Durham Street Methodist was rebuilt and revoiced (by HNB Melbourne / Christchurch) in 1946 so any recordings will not be the original Ingram sound. The local Organists' Association are compiling a CD of recordings of lost instruments of Christchurch, and it will contain two recordings from Durham Street as a memorial to the three that died there.
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