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2 manual wanted for school chapel.

Started by Northers, April 10, 2012, 09:11:31 PM

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Northers

Greetings everyone,

I am hoping to find a small(ish) organ for our chapel, we don't have lots of room, a practice organ size would be perfect. I am not too worried if it needs a little work. Am desperately trying to avoid buying a digital one!

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated.

Many thanks
Charlie

AnOrganCornucopia

IBO redundant organs list would be a good place to start - loads of potentially suitable instruments there.

Also, watch eBay - there's always stuff coming up there, some of it quite good.

diapason

There are a number of organs from redundant churches listed on the BIOS website - google 'bios redundant organs'.  Otherwise, your diocesan organ advisor (C of E) may know of something.  Where in the country are you?
Good luck!
Nigel

jon_nes

We just acquired a Baldwin PR200.  We're in Southern California. FREE
Are you interested?

Contrabombarde

You didn't say where you are based...

In the UK the IBO website lists some most interesting and worthy endangered instruments (as well as a few that I wouldn't think would quite make it onto my list of most deserving, but someone might want them). How about a two manual untouched Arthur Harrison for instance?
http://www.ibo.co.uk/IBO2005/services/redundant/redundantMain.asp

In Ireland this company rehouses redundant instruments:
http://www.organ.dnet.co.uk/popco/

And in the US there are some gems, albeit a bit pricey (how about $22000 for a two stop Father Willis?) on
http://www.organclearinghouse.net/

A bit of Googling suggests that in Canada and Australia there might be similar companies or websites.

David Drinkell

Quote from: Contrabombarde on April 13, 2012, 04:41:06 PM

In Ireland this company rehouses redundant instruments:
http://www.organ.dnet.co.uk/popco/


I know several jobs by these folk.  They are honest and do good work at reasonable prices.  worth investigating if you are in the British Isles.

Barrie Davis

Ive just looked at their website and they have some interesting organs available, if space were available the 2 manual Lewis would be ideal.

Barrie

David Pinnegar

For people in continental Europe www.ladach.de / http://www.pipeorgans.eu/en/ is worth keeping an eye on. They have very remarkable instruments from time to time

Best wishes

David P

David Drinkell

#8
Quote from: Barrie Davis on April 14, 2012, 11:17:06 AM
Ive just looked at their website and they have some interesting organs available, if space were available the 2 manual Lewis would be ideal.

Barrie

Also, the 1964 2-manual Conacher - I used to give a weekly lesson on this one for some years.  It was one of the firm's better jobs of the period and gave a very good account of itself, giving more than its size would suggest.  I was sad to learn it had gone, but the church building was a very big one in an area of Belfast where the population was anything but Presbyterian.

http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=D01444

Further down the list, the 1958 Binns sounded very fine in its original home (which, admittedly, had a good acoustic).  Again, one of the best examples of the firm's work at the period.

http://www.npor.org.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch.cgi?Fn=Rsearch&rec_index=C00322

David

Barrie Davis

They both look interesting instruments. did the Octave and suboctave couplers on the Conacher work on the reed unit? I had to smile when I saw the Great Octave coupler, I trust the Large open wasn't gigantic!!
I was interested to see that Binns were still going in 1958 had the company been taken over at this point?

Barrie

Northers

Hello, Sorry for the delay in replying, was away on hols.

Forgot to mention that the school is in Staffordshire and the chapel seats just over a hundred.

thank you for your help so far, will certainly have a good look.
Charlie

diapason

A very decent 2-manual has just come onto Ebay.  It's in Scotland.  Might be worth a look - search under 'church organ'.
N

David Drinkell

Quote from: Barrie Davis on April 17, 2012, 09:17:08 AM
They both look interesting instruments. did the Octave and suboctave couplers on the Conacher work on the reed unit? I had to smile when I saw the Great Octave coupler, I trust the Large open wasn't gigantic!!
I was interested to see that Binns were still going in 1958 had the company been taken over at this point?

Barrie

No, the octave couplers didn't work on the reed unit.  The Large Open was quite civilised, in fact the whole job was quite subtle - not too quiet for the building, but everything nicely balanced.  There are a heck of a lot of Conachers in Ireland - I think they were the dominant builders - but I always considered this to be one of the nicest.

I don't know the details of the Binns form after JJB died.  I think Fitton & Haley (employees?) carried on.  Binns, Fitton & Haley organs were nothing special, in my experience.  After that, the F&H bit was dropped and the firm became just Binns again, but went bust in the late fifties.  They had the organ from Lisburn Cathedral, Co. Antrim (a moderate-sized 2 manual) in the works at the time and the organist went over to Leeds in a van and claimed it before the bailiffs could get it.  I'm sure there's someone out there who knows more than I do about this piece of history.

AnOrganCornucopia

BF&H was later run by an outfit called Marshall Sykes - post-war, they actually built a cinema organ for the new Cecil Theatre in Hull, 3 manuals and 20 extended ranks. It's currently in storage awaiting a new home. It sounded like a jolly nice instrument, too, no amateur, inexpert effort - it had the richness and fire of a Christie and the decent choruses of a Compton.

Unfortunately, when BF&H went bust, they had Doncaster's OTHER Schulze (a smallish 3m) in the works. The bailiffs scrapped it.

As for the dominant builders on the Emerald Isle - what about the natives, Telford & Telford and Evans & Barr? I'm told both firms made a lot of organs, some of them extremely fine. A few ended up in this country and some even went for export to the New World. I recall an advert in an old Organists' Review from Kenneth Jones (apologising for his customary lateness, having had to send the ad straight to the printer after missing the OR deadline!) in which he mentioned a 3m E&B (I think!) in an Australian university (again, I think!) church which he had just restored and completed by adding a couple of prepared-for stops.

revtonynewnham

Hi

The Binns firm lasted until 1929/30, when it became Binns, Fitton & Hayley which traded until after 1950.  Fitton & Hayley themselves were in business from at least 1923, and in 1930 became J.J.Binns, Fitton & Haley Ltd.  (Info from BOA).  The organ in Westgate Baptist church here in Bradford was an early Binns, moved and enlarged by Andrews and later worked on by Hughes - but still very much retaining its Binns style, and last worked on by BFH in 1946.  The church is under threat - and it's an organ well worth saving, but is currently unplayable.

The Binns heritage is actually pretty strong in it - Fitton had worked for Binns (and possibly was trained by him) prior to establishing his own business, and Andrews was Binns' manager for 15 years - the Andrews firm became part of Hughes.  Both Hughes & Andrews were based in Bradford, and some of their work still exists around the city, although much has gone because of the number of churches made redundant.

Every Blessing

Tony

David Drinkell

Quote from: AnOrganCornucopia on April 19, 2012, 05:56:53 PM
As for the dominant builders on the Emerald Isle - what about the natives, Telford & Telford and Evans & Barr? I'm told both firms made a lot of organs, some of them extremely fine. A few ended up in this country and some even went for export to the New World. I recall an advert in an old Organists' Review from Kenneth Jones (apologising for his customary lateness, having had to send the ad straight to the printer after missing the OR deadline!) in which he mentioned a 3m E&B (I think!) in an Australian university (again, I think!) church which he had just restored and completed by adding a couple of prepared-for stops.

Telford and Evans & Barr were to some extent regional - south and north respectively.  Conachers are to be found throughout the whole of Ireland.  They built organs for the following Church of Ireland cathedrals: Clogher, Derry, Dromore, Enniskillen, Kildare, Sligo and Tuam.  That's seven out of thirty-one - not far off the proportion of Willises or Harrisons in the Church of England.  Their parish and nonconformist jobs run into hundreds, some quite notable - they even built the first Positive Organ in Ireland (Belmont Presbyterian, Belfast).  Although Telford produced some fine stuff early on, later ones could be very dull, especially the smaller jobs, and Evans & Barr only rarely rose above the mediocre (eg Our Lady of Lourdes, Moneyglass, Co. Antrim - St. Enoch's, Belfast was reputed to be impressive, but it was burned before I went there), although well-made, and they never got a cathedral.  Conacher not only had a factory in Dublin but the backing of a very large and well-staffed plant in Huddersfield.  Leonard Bartram, who eventually managed the firm, was previously manager in Ireland.

One might not immediately think of Conachers as being such a big firm, but when one counts up the instruments, the scale of their operations becomes clear.

CMDigitalOrgans

Hi Charlie,

I can completely see why you would want to avoid buying a digital organ...they mostly sound terrible, if not comical.  However, pipe organ lovers have found a haven in Hauptwerk.  I work for a company based in California that builds dedicated Hauptwerk instruments.  If a pipe organ is out of the question due to price or space limitations, we can build you an outstanding Hauptwerk instrument that, though not having the ambience of actual pipes, at least would avoid the stale sound of short sample loops and samples duplicated at many pitch levels (plus poor sampling techniques capturing way too much wind noise)  and would have the advantage of a large and colorful disposition, even on a two-manual model. 

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

Best regards,
Aaron Doyle,
VP of Sales,
Christopher Martin Digital Organs
martindigitalorgans.com


David Pinnegar

Quote from: CMDigitalOrgans on October 05, 2012, 02:06:05 AMIf a pipe organ is out of the question due to price or space limitations, we can build you an outstanding Hauptwerk instrument that, though not having the ambience of actual pipes, at least would avoid the stale sound of short sample loops and samples duplicated at many pitch levels (plus poor sampling techniques capturing way too much wind noise)  and would have the advantage of a large and colorful disposition, even on a two-manual model. 

Hi!

For anyone contemplating a Hauptwerk route, provided an instrument can be inspiration for a future pipe organ rather than a permanent replacement, and thus not putting proper organ building at risk, I can supply loudspeakers that enable an instrument to achieve the very best possible presentation of the effect worthy to be considered to be an organ rather than an electronic substitute.

I argued with the writers of the Hauptwerk software urging them for their own advantage to be more open to working with the physics and acoustics of speakers and pipes. Luckily for the generality of pipe organ building, they could not get their heads past the nature of public address and disco speaker technology as the current bees'-knees.  Really, however, the nature of speakers required to make recordings of pipes sound like pipes is rather different from that required by the normal reproduction of modern noise required for nightclubs.

Some of my advice was followed for the instrument described on http://ambassadororgan.wordpress.com/ and were my philosophies of speaker design to have been followed further that instrument would be even better than clearly it is. It's a situation where a pipe organ will never be possible and where the installation will be giving a significant inspiration.

Best wishes

David P

revtonynewnham

Hi

I would disagree with "CMDigitalorgans - not all commercial digital organs are dire - and not all Hauptwerk installations are perfect - or even good.  And whatever, the expected life of any digital substitute is only going to be 15-20 years, whereas a pipe organ, especially with tracker action, will last 100 and can then be restored to function for another 100.

Every Blessing

Tony

Bobbell9

Re longevity of Electronic Organs. On I installed in a Masonic Chapel in 1980 is still working. A 4-manual Copeman Hart installed in 1972 had the electronics  removed and a digital system installed in the original console. If you go down the electronic route please get as many channels as you can.