"Organ Repairman Assistant".....

Several days ago, a friend called me up and asked for some help with some repair work he was doing to a vintage pipe organ in a church in Cuyahoga Falls.  He said that, "E" wasn't working and he had narrowed it down to the bank of primary coils.  I, naturally, had no idea what this meant, but I figured why not and told him I'm in.

Well, much to my amazement, this thing was huge!  However, it was jammed in 3 of the smallest rooms I have ever been in.  I weigh about 180-190ish and I was about 30 pounds overweight for where we had to go to get to this thing.  The second picture shows where we had to crawl and contort around the supply piping to get into the first room.  The fourth picture is taken from the same spot looking in the other direction showing the door leading into the second room.  In this picture, you can see a chair that acted as a step to access the "walkway" that lead over the pipes to a ladder that lead down a story to the third room where we had to work.

Originally built by the Schantz Organ Company and installed in 1946, much of the organ is completely original.  It has 14 ranks, or different sets of pipes, for a total of 854 individual pipes.  Everywhere you looked there were pipes....round ones, square ones, steel ones and wood ones.  I can't imagine how or where you would begin to start tuning.

As for the repair, it took about 15 minutes to complete and my help really wasn't needed.  Regardless, I was glad for the opportunity.