Since the age of five I have been drawn to the organ. The organ was distinctively different to me from all other musical instruments. Every church I visited and every home that had an organ always aroused my strong desire from within to play the instruments. I would always go up and watch the organist and when they finished, I would talk to them about their instrument. It did not matter if it was a small tracker in the Methodist Church in Itasca, Texas, a workhorse Hammond at the Central Baptist Church in the same town or larger instruments where ever I was such as the large four manual Moller at First Presbyterian in Oklahoma City or the Flentrops and Casavants at Westminster Choir College in Princeton NJ. I have always been enamored by the music of the organ. I have always been intrigued by the construction of all organs both pipe and electronic, but especially pipe organs. When I could obtain permission (and many times when I did not bother to) I went inside the organ chambers, looked at the chests, studied the pipework and very often enjoyed playing the instruments. I noted chest construction, winding, acoustics and all types of organ action as well as the wide variation of organ stop and ensemble sounds.
While in college I purchased the bibles of organ building - The Art of Organ-Building by George Ashdown Audsley (first published in 1905 and corrected and published again by Dover in 1965) and The Contemporary American Organ by William H. Barnes (published by J. Fischer & Bro. eighth edition copyright 1965 and first published in 1930). I read these books over and over. I studied the photographs and line drawings. I ordered promotional literature from virtually every organ builder in the United States. For many years I toured organ companies throughout the United States and England to observe organ construction first hand. I still take advantage of such opportunities when I am in a new city and learn of a local builder.
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I spent ten years designing my organ and two more in construction. The chest and console along with the installation of two ranks of pipes were finished in May 1994. As with most organ designs I started with the stoplist specifications. I used my engineering skills and wrote a program to design my drilling templates for the windchest. I decided to implement an idea of halving the spacing between pipes in the same fashion that the pipe diameters are also halved on specified intervals. This provided the benefit of reducing the chest size considerably from one with consistent pipe spacing. The same program was modified to draw a scaled drawing of my pipe layout so that I could assemble a styrofoam model prior to actual windchest construction. When I was pleased with the layout, I was ready to start the chest construction. I selected direct-electric action for my construction. I carefully laid out the drilling templates on the rack board and toe board and drilled the pilot holes through both simultaneously. I then separated the boards and properly sized the pipe holes in the toe board. The chest was then sanded, stained and finished. The next step was the installation of the hundreds of direct electric valves. Then came the extensive wiring and soldering process. Following that was the racking of the pipes. A pipe jig was used to identify the precise diameter of the supporting whole for each pipe to be installed. The rack holes were then drilled and precisely sized using the original pilot holes in the rack board. Pipes were checked and occasionally the holes were fine tuned to make certain that the intstalled pipes were vertically plumb.
The original 8' Gedect is made of maple by Artisan Builders in Fargo ND. The 4' Principal was manufactured and voiced by Mr. Ben Williams of Knowlton Organs in Charlotte NC. Voicing was done on 70mm pressure.
The elctronic switching circuits were constructed using printed circuit cards and electronic components purchased from Devtronix. They have proven to be very reliable. The blower was manufactured in Germany. The wind reservoir was manufactured by Organ Supply in Erie PA.
I designed the console to be very traditional in style, but not grandiose. The two keyboards, the AGO pedalboard and the bench were manufactured by Klann Organ Supply. The key switches and reed pedal switches were supplied by Peterson Electromusic.
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