The Ultimate Geargeek Machines

[dafduc]

Caught the inaugural concert on the new Wilhelm Tracker at St. John's church in Fenton MI yesterday - 60 ranks, 3 manuals, 30-note pedalboard. What an instrument!!!

Probably cost $5-700,000 US.

Couldn't find any info on this one (opus 157) on the web, but here's a page from another local church that got a Wilhelm a couple of years ago. Never updated their page after completion, but gives a bit of an idea. THIS one I got to play once. Stunning.

http://www.staroftheseaparish.org/aboutus/organ.html

These things will last several lifetimes if you take care of them...

Daf

[regebro]

Originally posted by dafduc
http://www.staroftheseaparish.org/aboutus/organ.html

Puny!

These things will last several lifetimes if you take care of them...

One (of the three) in the Church in Visby (where my parents live) is from the mid 18th century.

The big one in that church had a place for the choir, INSIDE the organ. Quite massive sitting there. It also have one voice located at the other end of the church. You have to play that one a bit earlier that the otehr ones for the sounde to reach the main listening area at the same time. Luckily the organist there is brilliant.

[dafduc]

We'll try to schedule Visby on our next organ crawl...

[regebro]

Originally posted by dafduc
We'll try to schedule Visby on our next organ crawl...

Hehe:

Well, actually, you should. I know the organist, I'm sure he'd love to do a special demonstration of all five organs in the church.

Here's the swedish homepage: http://www.visbydomkyrkoforsamling.n...k/instrum.shtm . Too bad theres no BIG pictures. The big one is the one you can see the two fronts of on small pictures at the top of the page.

This church is the main host of "The Gotland Organ Days" in which each year top swedish organ players come and play on the different organs. Both religious and non-religous music is played, and one of the few chances there are to hear modern organ compositions...

[Toki987]

Are there many of these left here in the US? Europe still has them all over I understand. I bet it takes a hell of a technician to service one.

[dafduc]

Yeah, there's bunches. Crystal Cathedral's is huge. There's an even bigger one at Wanamaker's in PA, but it's not all working anymore.

There are a bunch of pipe organ builders in the US and Canada, including a few factories - Casavant and Wicks come to mind.

There are a lot of technicians around, but GOOD ones are hard to find. I have a friend who's a builder and tech, he's been specializing in reinstalls - pulling the pipe organs out of old decommissioned churches, installing them in new ones. He also built the baby tracker for Greenfield Village a couple of years ago - pretty cool. A "small" tracker is "only" $100K or so.

Daf