I really enjoy your videos. They are very informative with great video footage to go along with your talk. I would like to see more of them, but know they must be a lot of work. The switches and all that still mystify me. It's a very complex system.
I might be able to help with that! What he shows here is the switch stacks for unified ranks, as opposed to straight ranks. Think of a unified rank as a straight rank that has been extended by adding extra octaves of pipes. So a straight rank would typically be 61 pipes, or 5 octaves. On an 8' rank the lowest pipe is about 8 feet long, and all the pipes speak at unison pitch. Now if you add an extra octave of pipes at the treble end, making it a 73 pipe rank, you can draw a 4' stop by connecting the 61 keys an octave higher, from the 4' pipe to the top of the extension octave. Do it again and you get a 2' stop using 85 pipes in the rank. You can also add a 2 2/3' Nazard stop without adding any more pipes. You can also go down, adding an additional octave at the low end to provide a 16' stop using 97 pipes. Now, if you used all straight ranks, this would require 305 pipes, most of which are speaking at the same pitch. But by extending a single rank you can get 5 stops (16', 8', 4', 2-2/3', 2') using only 97 pipes in a single rank. The trick then is, how do we set this up so we can play the correct pipes for each stop? The answer is, a set of switches, one for each stop. Each switch has 61 sets of contacts connected to the correct range of pipes in that rank. When you add the stop, the corresponding switch is operated to connect that particular range of 61 notes to the manual. That is the simplest way I can think of to explain how this works! Hopefully I didn’t just add to the confusion!
I’m constantly amazed with the thought put in to the organ, take the 3 wind inputs for the keying room, the reason the echo blower provides wind for it (if I’m remembering right) is because the brass chorus/string II gets its keying signals from that keying room but it’s wind from the echo blower
Hold on there- it's going to be years before anything starts to play in the ceiling. Remember that the Echo blower runs all the side chambers on that side (Gallery I and II, String II and Brass Chorus) and they're going to be done first. That's going to bring on an amazing amount of material by itself.
So in the great division since the second keyboard has 85 keys, that just means that the greater portion of this division, there has to be 85 pipes. Since there are mixtures, If there was a mixture II, 170 pipes. If there's a mixture III, 255 pipes, if there's a mixture IV, 340 pipes if they belong to the great manual that has 85 keys.
Not quite: even though the Great keyboard has 85 pipes the bottom octave doesn't play most of the time, it only plays pedal borrows from the Grand Great, I believe. The Great chests are all 73 notes.
I see thousands of wires that all look the same color? Was there any kind of color coding in the cotton covered wires? How did they sort them out? I know they didn't have sticky wire numbers back then. And will all you showed eventually be replaced by the Opus system as the other side was?
As far as I know there was no color coding at all anywhere in the original wiring. They would "ring out" cables or have them pre-laced on wiring guides...how they did that to the remote locations I have no idea. Someday this material will be replaced by Opus II but left in place forever with the wind hooked up so everyone can see how it worked.
Oh, you know somebody got stuck in there before they put that in …
I really enjoy your videos. They are very informative with great video footage to go along with your talk. I would like to see more of them, but know they must be a lot of work. The switches and all that still mystify me. It's a very complex system.
I might be able to help with that! What he shows here is the switch stacks for unified ranks, as opposed to straight ranks. Think of a unified rank as a straight rank that has been extended by adding extra octaves of pipes. So a straight rank would typically be 61 pipes, or 5 octaves. On an 8' rank the lowest pipe is about 8 feet long, and all the pipes speak at unison pitch. Now if you add an extra octave of pipes at the treble end, making it a 73 pipe rank, you can draw a 4' stop by connecting the 61 keys an octave higher, from the 4' pipe to the top of the extension octave. Do it again and you get a 2' stop using 85 pipes in the rank. You can also add a 2 2/3' Nazard stop without adding any more pipes. You can also go down, adding an additional octave at the low end to provide a 16' stop using 97 pipes. Now, if you used all straight ranks, this would require 305 pipes, most of which are speaking at the same pitch. But by extending a single rank you can get 5 stops (16', 8', 4', 2-2/3', 2') using only 97 pipes in a single rank. The trick then is, how do we set this up so we can play the correct pipes for each stop? The answer is, a set of switches, one for each stop. Each switch has 61 sets of contacts connected to the correct range of pipes in that rank. When you add the stop, the corresponding switch is operated to connect that particular range of 61 notes to the manual. That is the simplest way I can think of to explain how this works! Hopefully I didn’t just add to the confusion!
@@ethanlamoureux5306 Good explanation. Having said that maybe next time I'll detail that in a video.
@@cnagorka I would love to see a video on that, and maybe someone else might enjoy it too.
Blows my mind that this was done with no computers. Blueprints. Hand tools not the greatest electric tools, and a crap ton of will power.
I’m constantly amazed with the thought put in to the organ, take the 3 wind inputs for the keying room, the reason the echo blower provides wind for it (if I’m remembering right) is because the brass chorus/string II gets its keying signals from that keying room but it’s wind from the echo blower
Correct.
Woah, echo blower later this year?! I cannot WAIT to hear those ceiling chambers.
Hold on there- it's going to be years before anything starts to play in the ceiling. Remember that the Echo blower runs all the side chambers on that side (Gallery I and II, String II and Brass Chorus) and they're going to be done first. That's going to bring on an amazing amount of material by itself.
It would not surprise me if the Midmer Losh relay room was capable of enabling time travel. ;)
So in the great division since the second keyboard has 85 keys, that just means that the greater portion of this division, there has to be 85 pipes. Since there are mixtures, If there was a mixture II, 170 pipes. If there's a mixture III, 255 pipes, if there's a mixture IV, 340 pipes if they belong to the great manual that has 85 keys.
Not quite: even though the Great keyboard has 85 pipes the bottom octave doesn't play most of the time, it only plays pedal borrows from the Grand Great, I believe. The Great chests are all 73 notes.
The best rooms are these
Engineering of this is very interesting, Just think of the amount of pencil pushing alone it would have taken, let alone the actual build up.
I see thousands of wires that all look the same color? Was there any kind of color coding in the cotton covered wires? How did they sort them out? I know they didn't have sticky wire numbers back then.
And will all you showed eventually be replaced by the Opus system as the other side was?
As far as I know there was no color coding at all anywhere in the original wiring. They would "ring out" cables or have them pre-laced on wiring guides...how they did that to the remote locations I have no idea. Someday this material will be replaced by Opus II but left in place forever with the wind hooked up so everyone can see how it worked.
The amazing part is the people who designed and wired all of that.
The old Estey we have installed has a switch stack to handle all the couplers, all crammed into the chest, so its nightmarish to work on!
i love the videos keep them coming!!!
Chris, quick question; any idea how many individual switch contacts are in the relay room? Thx again.
No clue, several thousand for sure.