The Organs

Utah Valley Pipe Organs Highlight

American Fork Utah East Stake Center 

By Blaine Olson 

February 27, 2023

Thumbs up for the new sounds!

The refurbishing of the American Fork East Stake Center organ (825 East 500 North in American Fork) is now complete, and the 7-rank Schantz organ is singing a little sweeter now that several digital voices have been added to its stoplist. The console has been refinished, and original stop action magnets (SAMs) were replaced with new ones. A crank-style height-adjusting mechanism was added to the existing bench, and more thumb pistons were added to the console to accommodate the increased number of presets available to the organist.  There were originally 8 thumb pistons for the 8 General combinations available (4 under each manual);  now there are 5 Generals under the Swell, 5 under the Great, and 5 General toe studs, bringing the total of General presets in the combination action to 15. (The 5 General toe studs are not just duplicates of the thumb pistons;  they are Generals 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15). There are no divisional presets, however.

Some "Footnotes" on the Pedal

Originally, the only 16’ stop in the Pedal was a downward extension of the manual 8’ Gedeckt, which was called 16' Gedeckt Bass. There had been a stop tablet for a 16' Contre Trompette, but this was a "prepared for" feature, the pipes for that stop having never been installed in the original instrument. The newly redesigned Pedal department now features a digital 32’ Contra Violone, 16’ Principal, 16' Contre Trompette, and 4’ Clairon as new digital supplements to the original Pedal stops, making a night-and-day difference in the organ’s Pedal department! There is also a Swell to Pedal 4’ and a Bass Coupler (auto pedal) in the revised Pedal that were not in the original.  In all, the Pedal has gone from 8 stops in the original organ to 14 stops in the new Pedal, (including couplers).

The Swell Has Swollen!

Originally built in 1993, the organ relied heavily on borrowing for the upperwork (stops above 4’ pitch), and there was very little of this upperwork to begin with!  In the revised manuals, the upperwork (the borrowed stops above 4’ pitch) was replaced with digital voices, thus eliminating a lot of the borrowing. The Swell has expanded from 8 stops in the original organ to 16 stops in the new Swell, which now includes a digital 4’ Prestant, 2 2/3' Nasard, 2’ Blockflote, 1 3/5' Tierce, 16’ Contre Trompette and 4’ Clairon, plus Swell to Swell 16’ and 4’ couplers and Unison Off, which were not in the original Swell. (The original Swell had a 1 1/3’ Nasat, which was the only mutation in the entire organ. It has been renamed Larigot). 

The new 2 2/3' Nasat and 1 3/5' Tierce balance incredibly well with the 8' Gedeckt to make a rich synthetic 8' Clarinet! However, trying to make a synthetic 8' Orchestral Oboe does not work well on this organ, as the Gemshorn (which is the closest thing to a String on this organ) has too much fundamental to be able to provide the thin sound (like that of a Salicional or Gamba) needed for the basis of the Orchestral Oboe sound (along with a thin 2 2/3', as from a String rank also).

With the presence of a digital 16' Contre Trompette and 4' Clairon to supplement the wind-blown 8’ Trompette, (and if needed, the use of sub- and super-couplers), the Reed section of the Swell is capable of producing the majestic voices needed for the Trumpet arpeggio-fanfare that I always play (starting at “And the rockets’ red glare…”) when accompanying “The Star Spangled Banner”! Like the awe-inspiring roar of an American fighter jet over the battlefield, this powerful fanfare brings tears of joy and patriotism to the eyes of the congregation, and I am always so grateful to have at my disposal a fine organ capable of accomplishing this!  

The Great Is Now a Little Greater!

The Great has gone from 7 original stops to the new complement of 13 stops, which includes borrows from the Swell. This gives the organist much more flexibility in choosing a registration. A solid state control system with 100+ memory levels in the combination action, plus record/playback features and transposer was also added.  The entire organ is under expression. For an organ of only 7 ranks, this organ (with its new additions) is pleasantly surprising… but digital chimes would have made a nice addition too! (Can't do "Silent Night" without chimes descant throughout the song)!

The console is in B&V (Balcom & Vaughan) style… BUT it is larger than just 3 ranks now. I believe it was expanded at some point, probably by Möller. Probably 6 or 7 ranks currently, but will need follow up to better determine correct count. The serial number stamped into the interior of the console may indicate it’s a rebuild, as opposed to an original. We’ve seen similar “non-conforming” numbers in other organs that we knew were rebuilds. —Blaine Olson

Utah Valley Pipe Organs highlight:

Lehi Utah Meadow View Stake

851 North 1200 East, Lehi

Blaine Olson

May 2024

Bulletin:  We recently learned about the completion of an organ rebuild project in Lehi, and we are excited to share with you the details of this exciting news! Two years ago, in April of 2022, the Lehi North and Lehi East Stakes split to form a new stake: The Lehi Utah Meadow View Stake.  The newly-created stake meets in the building formerly known as The Lehi Utah East Stake Center, located at 851 North 1200 East, in Lehi.  So the new Lehi Meadow View Stake inherited the pipe organ that came with the building!  The current Lehi Utah East Stake is now headquartered elsewhere.  So the building gets a name change... plus a newly rebuilt pipe organ that goes with the building.

Background:

Before I write an article about an organ, I visit the venue multiple times while the organ is in use, such as during a few sacrament meetings or a stake conference, in order to get an idea of how the organ sounds in actual use, with a congregation present.  When 200 or so warm bodies are added to the chapel, the acoustics change and the sound of the organ is affected substantially, especially in the high frequencies, which are easily absorbed by carpeting, draperies, and warm human bodies.  During my visits, I often encounter organists that are eager to have someone explain certain features of the organ to them.  So on a typical Sunday, after I have played for 2 church services in 2 different wards and 2 different chapels in my home stake, I head out to one of the chapels we are planning to feature in the newsletter, and listen to the organ in actual use.

The Lehi Meadow View Stake Center organ:

Built in 1976, the 11-rank Wicks organ was well-past the 30-year mark which the LDS Church uses as a guideline for targeted rebuilds, and we are excited to report that the recent rebuild/upgrade project is now complete.  The renovations included the addition of several new digital voices, including an 8' Geigen Diapason in the Swell, a 32’ Contra Violone and 16’ Diapason plus an "Auto Pedal" stop in the Pedal, and digital Chimes plus a digital 8’ Gemshorn and 8’ Gemshorn Céleste in the Great. I was pleased to hear that the Geigen Diapason sounded assertive enough to be easily heard, yet not at all overbearing.  (All too often I encounter digital Geigens that are voiced softer than they should be).

The new control panel for the organ is located in a drawer below the left drawknob jamb, and includes 300 levels of memory for the presets, a transposer that can change the played pitch up or down as much as 8 semitones either way, and record/playback capabilities!  These new features greatly enhance the organ's capabilities, but I'm not sure whether any of the organists are even aware of how to use the new features.  I say this because when I checked out the control panel to see what kind of registration arrangements people were choosing for their presets, I found that none of the thumb pistons had been programmed yet on any of the 300 memory levels, which suggests to me that people are unaware of the new feature.  I could not see a manual or instruction card for the control panel anywhere.  

Getting high?:  

The organ's bench has a crank on the right side to adjust the height of the bench, but the crank seems to be stuck, unable to be cranked up or down, with the bench in an overly high position.  I am 5' 11" tall, and I had to really stretch my legs in order to play the pedals because the bench was so high.  It could be that someone tried to "overadjust" the height of the bench, causing it to jam once it reached the highest position.  I dunno.  I didn't turn the bench over to see.

Some fire for the ensemble:  

When I first visited this organ 2 years ago and again last summer, neither the Trompette nor any of the stops borrowed from it was operational.  Today, not only does it work correctly, it is actually one of the better-sounding Trompettes in the Valley!  The pipes extend down to cover the 16’ octave (which is unenclosed and constitutes the Pedal's 16' Posaune and the Swell's 16' Contre Trompette, located on either side of the main pipe display), but I am concerned about the lack of proper support for the long resonators of those bottom 12 pipes!  After nearly 50 years without proper support in the upper portion of the long inverted-conical resonators, several of the longest pipes are starting to bend and lean in a precarious way, which, if not corrected soon, could lead to major damage to the pipes.  The metal in those pipe resonators is very soft, very easily dented, warped, or bent, especially when the pipes are not adequately supported at several points along the pipe.  (I saw this happen to a similar Wicks organ in a church in Salt Lake City, where lack of proper support eventually caused the long resonators to bend over so severely the pipes began to collapse upon themselves and could not be saved).

The shutters that shudder:  

When I visited Meadow View in mid-March (March 17th), there were a few major issues that I hoped would be resolved soon.  Chiefest among these issues was the “shutters that shudder!”  When the expression shoe was backed off most of the way or all of the way, the Swell shutters would literally shudder, very rapidly trying to open and close over and over and over again, as if trembling and shivering in the cold!  Since the shades operate in unison (all shades opening and closing simultaneously), when there is a problem with shutters, it affects all shades, not just a single one.  I was relieved to see (and hear) the shutters operating properly when I visited again 5 weeks later (on April 21st)!

Chime time:  

The digital chimes had a nice sound to them, but the speakers for all of the digital voices are enclosed in the Swell chamber, even though some of the stops are in the Great, so it can be challenging to achieve that “perfect balance” between an accompaniment in the Swell and the Chimes in the Great.  

Console features:   The original organ had only 4 General presets, duplicated by toe studs, with no memory level options.  Setting was done strictly by unlocking access to the combination action using a key switch, and the keys to these lock-switches on organs like this often went missing, leaving the organ with no way to change the presets!  The current console allows access to 300 levels of memory, accessed via the control panel.  There are now 10 thumb pistons for Generals, but only the first 4 are duplicated by toe studs.  There is also a Swell to Pedal thumb piston and a Great to Pedal thumb piston, along with a Sforzando thumb piston (duplicated by toe stud) and a Great to Pedal toe stud.  All of this makes the organ so much easier for individual organists to customize the console to their own personal likes, without disturbing the settings that other people may prefer.

My impression:   

I thought that overall the organ sounded quite nice.  The Diapason chorus sounded better-balanced than when similar registration has been used on some other organs in the Valley.  The new digital voices fill in a lot of spots that were missing in the original organ, and help make a smoother buildup of power on the Crescendo pedal.  These digital voices blend well with the pipe voices, and greatly enhance the tonal resources of the instrument.  The Trompette has the fire one would expect, yet does not overpower the ensemble, and it is one of the better-sounding Trompettes on any organ in the Valley.  The Diapason chorus was nicely balanced, perhaps just a wee bit on the gentle side, but not bad at all.  I felt that the 32' Contra Violone is voiced way too soft, barely audible, and unable to add that solid rumble expected in a 32' Pedal stop, but that can be fixed.  The 16' Posaune was likewise on the mild side, yet a valuable resource.  A few of the notes throughout the organ sounded like they were a little out of regulation (meaning they were not quite at the same volume level as adjacent notes were).  I was impressed with the congregation's participation in the singing.  Although there is room for improvement, I thought the folks in the meetings I attended sang better than almost any of the other congregations I have visited, but the Spanish ward that I play for (on a Johannus organ) is still the best ward in the Valley when it comes to congregational participation.

I liked the silvery Gamba and Gamba Celeste in the Swell of this organ, and the digital Gemshorn and Gemshorn Celeste in the Great really add a lot of possibilities to the instrument!  They have a lovely sound (typical of Johannus digital stops), and are a valuable resource in the Great.  The only real problem with the Celeste stops on any organ is the lack of understanding by many organists on how to properly use these special stops!  ...and when NOT to use them!!!

As I sat near the rear of the chapel during one sacrament meeting at Meadow View, I heard the telltale undulations typical of having Céleste stops added to the chorus— very distracting indeed!  Too theatrical!  The organ sounded as if it was long overdue for a major tuning.  Upon investigating, I discovered that the organist was using 2 Célestes in her ensemble to accompany the sacrament song:  a Gamba & Gamba Céleste (both pipe) in the Swell and a Gemshorn & Gemshorn Céleste (both digital) in the Great, manuals coupled, along with  numerous other stops for her registration.  There was a major improvement in the overall beauty of the ensemble simply by eliminating the Celestes from the mix.  I could tell by her manual technique that this particular organist most likely had never been taught much about how to play the instrument, so I suggested she try taking advantage of some of the programs and resources offered by BYU and UVAGO to help new organists.

Special Teaching Moment: about Celestes-- what they are, how and when to use them:

As I travel around Utah Valley visiting the many chapels with pipe organs, by far the most common mistake I hear organists make is with their choice of stops for accompanying hymns.  Most organists tend to use very soft registrations, usually consisting of Flutes in the Swell, but with the Swell box closed!  Some use the Flutes in the Great, but many organists avoid use of the Diapasons.  Very very few use a proper Diapason chorus with Flute fill-in tones... (and we wonder why the congregation doesn't sing???)!  Flutes and Strings are harder to hear when singing in a congregation because Flutes lack the higher overtones that aid in speech discrimination, and Strings are weak in an easily-heard fundamental pitch.  Many organists do not realize the importance of having an easily-heard 4' stop as a key part of their registration, which makes it easier to hear the organ's pitches over the sound of people around them singing. 

But the biggest no-no of all that I hear from so many organists is the use of Celestes as part of their registration for accompanying singing!  We need to get the word out to organists everywhere:  Celestes are not intended to be used for accompanying singing!  They actually damage the chorus, rather than aid it!

Celestes are "special effects" stops that are intended to be used for things like preludes and soft background music, funerals, quiet organ solos... but not for accompanying singing.  A Celeste is a rank of pipes that is deliberately de-tuned just slightly, usually (but not always) just slightly sharp.  As a general rule, every Celeste rank is intended to be used only with a very specific in-tune rank (whose stop tablet or drawknob should be adjacent to or very near its own stop control.  On organ consoles with tongue-type "tilt" tablets or "rocker switches", the stop switch for the Celeste will be the very next tab on the stop rail, just to the right of the matching on-pitch rank.  On drawknob organs, the Celeste may be above, below, or diagonally next to the on-pitch stop.

Important to know:  Most organists do not realize that different types of Celestes are not tuned alike.  A Voix Celeste, (which is the standard name for a Salicional Celeste, but may be used for just about any String celeste) is usually tuned slightly sharp, but a Gemshorn Celeste may be tuned a wee bit less sharp than a Salicional Celeste (Voix Celeste) would be.  A Flute Celeste will be even less sharp yet-- closer to the prime tone-- with slower beating.  The exact amount of how sharp a Celeste is tuned will depend on how bright the rank is voiced.  A Flute Celeste will be tuned just ever-so-slightly sharp, as would any Diapason celeste (such as a Vox Umana).  Diapason Celestes are rare animals, and when you do find one, it is most likely a hybrid, like a Viol Diapason, Violin Diapason, or Geigen Diapason... although diminutive Foundation stops such as a Dulciana, Gemshorn, or Erzahler are quite common.  (Some builders classify the Gemshorn as a String, but most seem to agree that it is more Diapason in its tone than a String... and a lot depends on how the pipe is voiced, how much harmonic development it has).

Flute Celestes and Foundation (Diapason family) Celestes are not tuned as sharp as the String Celestes because they contain stronger lower harmonics, which lie within the "efficient range" of human hearing, and when they are tuned too sharp, they sound more "out of tune" and less pleasing to the ear than the String Celestes that are able to be tuned sharper and still sound pleasant (because they are much weaker in those lower harmonics, and stronger in the upper overtones).

So, on a properly-tuned pipe organ, if we have a String Celeste and a Flute Celeste, the String Celeste is likely to be tuned sharper than the Flute Celeste!  If you were to play just these 2 Celestes together, you could expect to get beating between them, because the String Celeste is tuned sharper than the Flute Celeste-- but between the on-pitch partners of those 2 Celestes, there would be virtually no beating, assuming they are tuned "perfectly."  If we were to play a Flute Celeste along with a String Celeste, and add in the on-pitch partners to the Celestes, we are going to get an auditory bombardment of many pitches all beating against each other because each Celeste rank is going to undulate not only with its own on-pitch partner, but also with the other on-pitch rank as well as the other Celeste rank!  Now, if we add in other stops, the Celestes are going to beat against each of them as well... Celestes were never intended to do that!  A Celeste is going to beat against every single pipe that is also playing at the same time, including other Celestes that may be tuned differently.

In the case of the Lehi Meadow View organ (and all other organs with more than one Celeste), we must not expect the Voix Celeste in the Swell to be in tune with the Gemshorn Celeste of the Great, even if the Gemshorn is voiced on the bright side!  Adding any Celeste to an ensemble is going to create beating between that rank and every other rank in the ensemble, and it is bound to be noticed by people in the congregation.  I had several people at Meadow View tell me they thought there was something wrong with the organ, that the organ sounds out of tune, while the actual source of most of their complaints was that there were two Celestes mixed in with a number of other stops, creating beating from numerous sound sources!

It is important to note also that not all Celestes are tuned sharp.  You may sometimes encounter a stop marked something like "Erzahler Celeste II".  The Roman numeral indicates that this stop tab (or knob) is a compound stop, which means the stop switch controls more than one rank of pipes. The Erzahler Celeste II (or any two-rank Celeste) may consist of an "on-pitch" Erzahler plus a sharp Erzahler, or it may control a very-slightly flat Erzahler plus a very-slightly sharp Erzahler.  Some organists prefer this "flat-sharp" arrangement for a two-rank Celeste because each of the ranks is tuned closer to the prime tone, allowing them to get away with a few techniques that would not work well with a standard Celeste arrangement.  However, many other organists prefer the "standard" on-pitch plus sharp style, with the on-pitch rank having its own stop tablet.  This method gives the organist one more on-pitch stop to use in other combinations.

Bottom line: NEVER USE CELESTE STOPS IN YOUR ACCOMPANIMENT FOR CONGREGATIONAL SINGING! PLEASE!

The photos above show the old 1980 Wicks console, which was replaced with a Johannus Monarke console in the summer of 2024 at which time many digital voices were added to this organ. The photos below show the stop rails of the 1980 Wicks.

The following photos show the stop rails on the Johannus Monarke console, which was installed in the summer of 2024. Many digital voices were added during the rebuild. Also shown is the patch panel underneath the key desk, where midi equipment or headphones may be plugged in. The photo appears to be upside-down, but that is actually how the panel appears if you just lean down and look up at it. Also, there are four photos of the digital display, showing options available to the organist for flexibility.  

 Valley Pipe Organs Highlight:

Orem Utah Orchard Stake Center Organ

by Blaine Olson



SPECIAL BULLETIN:  

"Great" news! The Orem Utah Orchard Stake Center organ rebuild project is now complete! (That's really "Swell"!)

At the closing social this past May (2024), one of our Chapter members informed me that the Orem Orchard Stake Center organ was scheduled for rebuild over the summer, and I have been watching so as to document the rebuild and update our UVPO website with the new details on the organ.  We really appreciate it when folks pass along info about rebuild projects, as it's really the only way we have of knowing what organs are being updated.

The good folks in the Orem Utah Orchard Stake Center have been longing for a rebuild of their 8-rank Wicks organ for a very long time now, and we are just as thrilled and excited as they are to finally be able to announce that the long-awaited rebuild project is finally completed, and Heaven has smiled on that little corner of our valley!  This is really fantastic news for all of us!  The "new" organ was officially back in service as of June 24, 2024.

The Orem Utah Orchard Stake Center is located at 880 East 600 North in Orem.  Most of us know where the Orem Sharon Stake Center is (on 800 East in Orem)— so if you stay on 800 East and travel about 12 blocks north (to 650 North), you’re there.

The original 8-rank Wicks was built in 1974, and boasted all of 4 thumb pistons and no toe studs whatsoever, with 4 levels of memory.  (Actually, it was probably originally a single level of memory, with the other 3 levels added during subsequent revisions, but I have no conclusive proof of that).  

The original Wicks console was more ornate than most Wicks organs in the area, but the sound of the instrument is what really matters, and the tonal capabilities of the original Wicks were quite limited.  For example, the organ originally had only one 16-foot stop in the Pedal: a 16’ SubBass, which was an extension of the 8’ Gedeckt in the Great, and was less than ideal for being able to adequately fill in the needs of the Pedal department, especially when trying to support a fuller chorus in the manuals!  The Pedal now has three 16’ flue stops plus a 32’ stop, plus Pedal Reeds at 16' and 8' pitches.

There were no Reeds at all in the original instrument.  If you wanted to create the illusion that a Reed was present, your best bet was to use the 1 1/3’ Quint as part of your registration, assuming the Quint was voiced such that such an illusion was even possible. Audio-spectral analyses of several Trumpet ranks have shown that the 1 1/3’ component is the strongest element of many Trumpets, even stronger than the fundamental in many cases.  This makes the 1 1/3’ pitch extremely valuable in a small organ like this one.  Adding a 1 1/3’ stop to a Trumpet or similar Reed may give the Reed a more powerful timbre.  Of course, you’ll always want to experiment first to be sure the addition of the mutation stop helps, but not hinders the tone of the Reed.

Prior to the rebuild, the organ had only 4 levels of memory, with only 4 thumb pistons and no toe studs.  Contrast that with the 250 levels of memory (wow!) in the organ now, with 10 General thumb pistons and 5 divisional pistons for each manual plus 6 toe studs for Pedal presets!  It also has toe studs for “previous” and “next, which, when activated, advance the registration to the next one or takes the registration back to the previous one.  This is a very handy feature to have, especially if you are bouncing back and forth between two registrations, like if you want to use one registration for the verse and a different one for the chorus, but also want each verse of the hymn to be played just like the previous verses.

The new Monarke console (by Johannus) employs tracker-touch keyboards with a very nice (not too stiff) touch, and with the Great keyboard being velocity-sensitive, to allow for an extra element of volume control for the Chimes: the harder (faster) you strike the keys, the louder the chimes sound.  I made a comment about the Chimes on the Hobble Creek West Stake organ that I now realize was probably untrue.  I was disappointed with its soft volume in the Chimes.  I spent a lot more time on the Orchard Stake organ and found that there is a master volume control for the Chimes.  You can use the pull-up menu to select from many options, one of which is Chime volume.  From that screen, you can adjust the overall volume of the Chimes, and still have that additional degree of control by striking the keys softer or harder.  Sweet!  The Chimes have a 37-note compass, from tenor “G” up 3 full octaves to “g2” (the “g” above middle).  And they sound terrific!  

The stop rail employs "rocker" stop switches, which also automatically switch on or off upon use of the Crescendo pedal.  In other words, as you gradually depress the Crescendo pedal, the rocker switches for each stop physically moves to the "on" position as stops are added, or "off" when backing off the Crescendo pedal.  If you press the General Cancel piston, but several stops refuse to cancel, it's because the Crescendo pedal is not fully backed off!  The nice part about this is that if you hear something you don't like as you depress the Crescendo shoe, you have a physical indication of what stops are on, and you have the option of reprogramming your Crescendo order to work around the stop you don't like.

The pull-up menu also allows the organist to make adjustments to things like master volume of the organ, tremulant speed and depth, reverb variations, temperaments, other audio adjustments, and more.  You can even customize your own Crescendo pedal order!  That’s great for folks who may not want certain stops in their crescendo, or want stops brought into the ensemble in a different order than a “fixed” Crescendo pedal might have.  Keep in mind, though, that with the exception of the Crescendo order, these controls only affect the digital stops.  The Crescendo order affects all stops, be they pipe or digital.

The 8 wind-blown ranks have always been on low wind pressure (and still are), which means the organ is a bit on the chiffy side, but not too terribly bad.  A little chiff is good, but some organs have so much chiff it becomes distracting.  This one is borderline.  I would love to hear this organ again after retrofitting the pipes with toes and the wind pressure increased, like what Ryan Ballantyne did on his 2014 rebuild of the Provo Stake organ (Slate Canyon wards).  That organ was built the same year as the Orchard organ.  A wee bit less chiff would be a good move for this organ.  We'll go into more detail about chiff in an upcoming issue of the newsletter.

I found that the pipe tremulant was way too deep for a chapel organ— too theatrical.  This is an adjustable item, but not from the console nor by the organist.  It requires access to the pipe chamber and adjustments made to the wind inlet valve and a wooden slider atop the Trem box.  And it can be a little tricky.

The bottom notes of the Great’s Gedeckt are wood, while most of the rank is comprised of capped Hoyt metal pipes.  The metal pipes give a brighter sound than the wood, but the wood ones are more resonant, making them ideal for the bass notes, (plus they are cheaper to make).  The Gedeckt is extended down 12 notes to act as the 16’ SubBass in the Pedal.

The 2’ Spitz Octave is an extension of the Gemshorn, while the 4’ Nachthorn is actually an extension of the 8’ Koppelflute.  The bottom 7 notes of the 4’ Klein Principal are borrowed from the 8’ Gemshorn.

The original organ had no Reeds whatsoever, and the only mutation was a 1 1/3’ Quint.  On the rebuilt instrument, that single 1 1/3’ stop has been changed to a 2 2/3’ Nazard, with a digital 1 3/5’ Tierce added.  The organ no longer has a stop at 1 1/3’ pitch— which is too bad, ‘cuz some of us actually prefer the 1 1/3’ pitch in a chorus over the 2 2/3’, as the addition of a 1 1/3’ stop, if properly voiced, can often create the auditory illusion that a soft Reed is playing in the background.  This would be critical in the case of the organ's original stoplist, which lacked Reeds altogether.

The addition of a digital 8’ Geigen Principal in the Swell really helps immensely!  The Swell also has a digital 16’ Contre Trumpet, 8’ Trumpet, and 4’ Clarion, while the Great now includes a digital 8’ Clarinet, and the Pedals now have a digital 16’ Bombarde and 8’ Trumpet, in addition to a 32’ Contra Violone, 16’ Principal, and 16’ Lieblich Gedeckt to supplement the existing 16’ SubBass.

Underneath the key desk, on the left side, is a panel which contains sockets for Midi inputs, additional speakers, and a headphones jack, for when you want to practice but not be heard.  Just remember, though, this only works on the digital stops.  If you wanna practice without disturbing others, those headphones are not gonna keep the wind-blown pipes silent! 

Conclusion:

Overall, I am pleased with the "new" Orchard Stake organ.  Having played the instrument both before and after the rebuild project, I can assure you that the "new" organ is a thousand times the organ that the original was.  The 32' Contra Violone in the Pedal is the perfect stop to create a little rumble without causing damage to the plaster on the ceilings, and the presence of decent Chorus Reeds (and a solo Reed) makes a world of difference.  The new digital 8' Geigen Principal in the Swell is just the right stop to bring the Swell into a decent division, and the addition of the 1 3/5' Tierce really helps provide more color options for the instrument.  My only real issue is with the depth of the Trem.  Lighten up the depth of the Trem a wee bit, and we now have a fairly decent organ to provide proper music for the purpose of singing praises to Him who gave us the wonderful means to enjoy beautiful music in the first place.

***

If you are aware of any rebuild projects scheduled for organs in our Valley, please pass along the info to me so we can monitor and report the progress of the rebuild, so all of our organists in the area can learn of what's happening in our little Valley.  We do our best to keep the UtahValleyPipeOrgans.org website updated, while also documenting the organs for historical purposes, but it is a daunting task!  We need your help!  The website contains both before- and after- photos of the organ, something that several people have asked about with regards to the Provo Tabernacle Austin organ, for example.  

Please visit the UVPO website to see numerous other photos of this and all other pipe organs that we are aware of, and please pass along any additional info you may have that we may share with others via the UVPO website.

~Blaine Olson:  PipeOrganGuy1@gmail.com 

Pedal Stops

Swell Stops

Great Stops

Utah Valley Pipe Organs Highlight: 

 Orem Utah Sharon 1st & 2nd Wards

(in the Orem Utah Sharon Stake)

The organ in the Orem Sharon 1st & 2nd ward chapel (641 south 400 east, Orem) is among the better-equipped “smaller” organs in the area.  This 8-rank Wicks was built in 1974, and rebuilt in 2013, at which time the organ was retrofitted with a Peterson ICS-4000 “Integrated Pipe Organ Control System,” giving it a huge boost in memory levels, personalized preset options, 13-position transposer (namely, no transposition, up to 6 semitones upward, and up to 6 semitones down from notes as played), midi capabilities, record/playback features, etc.  We now have ICS-4000 control systems on several organs throughout the Valley.  To see all of the features of the ICS-4000, click on the following link:

Peterson Electro-Musical Products Inc. - ICS-4000™

petersonemp.com

The symmetrical pipe display at Sharon 1, 2 is very eye-appealing, indeed.  It consists of the Great’s 8’ Principal, 8’ Holz Gedeckt, and 2’ Flachflöte.  The ranks are distributed as follows:  

1. Rohrflöte (plays at 16’ & 8’ in Pedal, 8’ & 2’ in Swell, 4’ & 2 2/3’ in Great)

2. Gemshorn (8’, 4’, 2 2/3’ in Swell, 4’ & 2 2/3’ in Great, 8’ & 4’ in Pedal)

3. Gemshorn Céleste (8’ Swell and Great)

4. Nachthorn (4’ Swell)

5. Fagot (16’, 8’, & 4’ in Pedal, 8’ & 4’ in Swell, 8’ in Great)

6. Principal (8’ & 4’ Great)

7. Holz Gedeckt (8’  Great, 16’ above CC in Pedal)

8. Flachflöte (2’ Great)

Although all of the mutations are borrows, they worked better than I thought they would in this small instrument, and the overall results were not too bad.  (I’m sure they would have been much better if they were all independent voices, but space and funds always take a toll on “wish lists”)!

Ideally, we would need an 8’ and 2 2/3’ String to synthesize an Orchestral Oboe, but substituting Gemshorns for Strings on this organ still did a surprisingly decent job!  

The attempt at a synthetic Clarinet using an 8’ Rohrflöte, 2 2/3’ Gemshorn, and 1 3/5’ Tierce  was not quite as successful, but still not horribly bad either.  Had the 2 2/3’ stop in the Swell been borrowed from the Rohrflute (like it is in the Great) instead of the Gemshorn, we could have created a more realistic synthetic Clarinet.

I thought the Swell shutters opened/closed more slowly than most other organs throughout the Valley, and many of the keys were “squeaky” when depressed (from age and wear).  Nevertheless, the overall sound of the organ was quite nice, although the Tremulant was adjusted too deep (too dramatic, too theatrical for tasteful church purposes).  Tremulants on church organs are at their finest when not too deep and not too fast.  Speed and depth are both adjustable items, but not from the console by the organist.

This organ is one of only 4 pipe organs in the Valley that has a 32’ Resultant in the Pedal.   More detailed information on Resultants will be presented in next month’s newsletter, but before we can understand Resultants, we first need to understand mutations, especially those that are found in Pedal stops.  So let’s delve into mutation stops first, and next month we’ll feature another of the organs which has a Resultant in the Pedal, and look more closely at Pedal mutation stops and Resultants.  For now, just think of a Resultant as a “synthetic 32’ stop.”

One of the most interesting features about the organ in the Sharon 1st & 2nd Ward chapel is the fact that it has two mutation stops (fractional stops) in both the Swell and the Great!  They’re borrowed from other ranks, true, but the important thing is how much those mutations add to the tonal possibilities of this organ.  Remember:  when we start with an 8’ stop, then add octave-sounding (whole-numbered) stops, such as 4’, 2’, or 1’ pitches, we are adding brilliance to the ensemble, whereas when we add “fractional” stops, such as 2 2/3’, 1 3/5’, 1 1/3’, or 1 1/7’, we are adding color.  This added color may even give the auditory illusion that a soft Reed is playing in the background, or it may be used to create synthetic stops, like a Clarinet or an Orchestral Oboe, for example.  The 2 2/3’ and 1 1/3’ stops are especially important when building a powerful chorus of sound because of how they “bind together the higher pitches.”

Because this organ has a fairly decent complement of mutation pitches available to the organist, perhaps this is a good opportunity to explain in easy-to-understand terms what "mutation stops" are all about.  



Special teaching moment: what are “mutation” stops?

(Not just how they sound, nor what pitches they play at, but just what are they, anyway?)

As I travel around the Valley documenting pipe organs, I often talk with organists about their questions and concerns, and try to help them resolve any issues.  One of the most frequently asked questions has to do with “mutations”— also called “fractional” stops, because their pitch is represented as a mixed number— that is to say, a whole number and a fraction, such as 2 2/3 or 1 3/5, for example, instead of a whole number only, as with “octave-sounding” pitches.  It is not unusual for an organist to tell me they attended organ workshops where they came away still confused about mutation stops--sometimes even more confused than before the workshop!.  They often say they were told that “a 2 2/3’ sounds a pitch an octave and a fifth above the note as played, and a 1 3/5’ sounds two octaves and a third above the played note.”  Their chief complaint is: “I asked what it is and why it is, not how to play it!  If I don’t know what it is all about, I really don’t need to know how to play it!”

To further confuse the issue, new organists often complain that they were taught that, “Thirds are fifths, and fifths are thirds,” which only leaves them more confused.  While it is true that any fractional stop with a denominator of 5 in the fraction sounds at a third (or some octave above a third) above the note as played, and if the denominator of the stop’s pitch is a 3, then the pitch sounds at a fifth (or some octave above a fifth), but to say that “thirds are fifths, and fifths are thirds” only confuses the new organist even more— and their original question about the mutation stop remains unanswered!  Plus it does not take into account mutation pitches such as 1 1/7’ or the even more rare 8/9’!  I actually had one elderly gentleman tell me that he has been playing organ for over 58 years, and in all that time, he has never ever used a mutation stop because “it makes everything sound funny and odd, and ruins the sound of the organ.”  He shared with me that he learned more about mutation stops in 10 minutes of talking with me than he had learned on his own in more than half a century of practice and even attending organ workshops.  He was excited to finally understand these important stops that he had always avoided!

To better understand mutation pitches, keep in mind that organ pipes do not produce “pure tones”— sounds which consist of just one single, simple sine wave. When we hear an organ pipe play, we are hearing a complex tone consisting of a fundamental (prime tone) and a number of harmonics, which are multiples of the prime tone’s frequency, at varying  strengths.  It is the presence of these harmonics and their strengths relative to the prime tone that determine the timbre of the organ pipe.  Now let’s dive into how to make sense of mutation stops.

An 8’ Diapason at CC (lowest note on the manuals) produces a fundamental frequency of about 65.4 Hz (Hz=Hertz, or cycles per second) when the organ is tuned to A=440 on the equal tempered scale.  At the same time, the CC pipe also produces sounds that are twice that frequency, three times the frequency, 4x and so on, in varying strengths.  Typically, the prime tone (which is identified as the first harmonic) is the strongest of these harmonics, with the second harmonic (the 4' element) being somewhat weaker than the prime tone, and the harmonics above the 4' component being weaker still... but a pipe may be voiced to sound any of its harmonics louder or softer, thus changing the overall timbre of the pipe.  The exact timbre of the pipe depends on the strengths of each of these harmonics relative to the prime tone and each other.  If someone says that a particular stop sounds “quinty”, they are saying that there is a pronounced third harmonic in the tone of the pipe.  If a person says a pipe sounds unusually “bright”, they are saying there is a stronger than usual sounding of the upper harmonics.  A pipe with strong lower harmonics (first and second) is often said to have a horn-like tone.  A Clarinet has a strong prime tone, fairly strong 3rd and 5th harmonics, with almost no "even-numbered" harmonics (2nd, 4th, etc).  

Here's the magic formula for understanding mutation stops:

Look at the pitch designation of any mutation stop.  Instead of looking at the denominator and saying something like, “Oh, the denominator is a 3, so the pitch is a fifth,” I want you to say, “Oh, the denominator is a 3, so it sounds the third harmonic of ________.”  The blank represents the pitch series of the fundamental (i.e., 16’, 8’,  4’, etc.)!  To fill in the blank, we simply need to rewrite the pitch of the stop as a fraction only, without any whole number. 

Let’s take the most common of the mutation stops:  the 2 2/3' pitch.  To express this value as a straight fraction, multiply the whole number by the denominator, then add the numerator to that figure.  So 2 (the whole number) times 3 (the denominator) equals 6, plus the numerator (2) equals 8.  This is our new numerator.  The denominator remains the same. So 2 2/3 = 8/3.

Now that we have a straight fraction, we know exactly what a 2 2/3’ stop is.  The numerator (8) tells us the pitch series to which the stop belongs.  In this case it’s the 8’ stop series.  Had the numerator ended up as a 16, the stop would belong to the 16-foot series.  The denominator tells us which harmonic of that pitch series is represented (or reinforced) by the stop.  So 2 2/3 = 8/3 = the third harmonic of the 8’ pitch series.  It sounds a tone that is 3 times the frequency of the prime tone.

Let’s do another.  We often see a 1 3/5’ stop in the Swell.  Let’s convert it to a fraction without the whole number.  The whole number (1) multiplied by the denominator (5) = 5.  Add the existing numerator (3) and we have 5 + 3 = 8.  So our 1 3/5  can also be expressed as 8/5.  Our stop, then, belongs to the 8’ series (the new numerator), and it is the 5th harmonic of that series (shown by the denominator).  

One more:  let’s consider the valuable 1 1/3’ pitch.  We multiply the whole number (1) by the denominator (3).  1 x 3 = 3.  Add in the existing numerator (1).  3 + 1 = 4.  Our new numerator is 4.  The denominator remains the same (3).  1 1/3 = 4/3.  So our stop belongs to the 4’ pitch series, and is the 3rd harmonic of that series, or 3 times the fundamental frequency of that series.

So, where does the 1 1/3’ fit into an 8’ series, since 8' represents the same pitch as those of a piano, and is our basic reference point for manual organ stops?  Easy fix. If we want our numerator to be 8, to represent our desired 8-foot reference, we simply multiply our 4/3 fraction by 2/2.  (That’s the same as multiplying by 1, which does not change the value of our fraction).  We multiply straight across, numerator by numerator and denominator by denominator.  4/3 x 2/2.   So  4 x 2 = 8 (new numerator) and 3 x 2 = 6 (new denominator—the fraction is the same value, but written in a way that relates to the 8’ stop series.  1 1/3 = 8/6.  So our pitch is the 6th harmonic (6 times the fundamental frequency) of the 8’ series!  Or the 3rd harmonic of the 4’ series, whichever you prefer!  (Yes, it is also the 12th harmonic of the 16’ series).

Now let’s look at a more unusual stop pitch.  Consider the lucky soul who is invited to play the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ for the very first time.  As she sits at the console and glances to the right, she sees something different among the Great stops: Septiéme 1 1/7’ !!!

“Oh my goodness!” she says to herself.  “If fifths are thirds and thirds are fifths, what is this animal?  It’s neither a third nor a fifth. No one ever explained about 1 1/7’ stops!”

Applying our formula for determining a mutation stop’s value, we multiply the whole number by the denominator (1 x 7 = 7).  Then we add the numerator to that total (7 + 1 = 8).  Since our denominator remains the same, our calculations tell us that 1 1/7 is the same as 8/7!  So it belongs to the 8’ stop series and is the 7th harmonic of that series.  It sounds the note two octaves and a seventh above the note being played.  For middle "c" that translates to the (a#) two octaves and a seventh above the played note, just 2 semitones below the 1’ pitch.  The 1 1/7' stop is usually only found on very large organs, where a more complete representation of harmonic development is sometimes desired. 

Try on your own to determine the value of the 10 2/3’ Quint in the Pedal of the Tabernacle organ!

Did you come up with 32/3?  10 2/3' represents the third harmonic of the 32' series.  Next month we’ll show you how to use the 10 2/3’ stop, ‘cuz guess what!  There actually is one organ in our valley that has a 10 2/3’ stop in the Pedal!  (And it’s not the Alpine Tabernacle, either)!  We’ll explain how it is used next month!

Someone asked me if there are stops like 8/9’ or 8/11’ .  The answer: they exist in some mixtures, but are extremely rare as stand-alone stops.  You may have noticed that as we go up in frequency (pitch), the keys that correspond to the higher harmonics get closer and closer to each other, and above about the 9th or 10th harmonic, the pitches of the natural harmonics actually lie between the notes on the keyboard, and become more dissonant as well.  So anything above 1’ pitch (or perhaps 8/9’ pitch) is almost never represented as a discrete stop.  (It would likely be called “Dog Whistle” if it existed, just like a 128’ stop in the Pedal would be called “Earthquake”)!  Just kidding.  8/9 is a “None”— not “none” as in nada, nil, zilch, nothing, but “no-nay”, as in “ninth”.

Remember: the “fundamental“ is defined as the “first harmonic.”  (Do not confuse “harmonic” with “overtone”.  While both terms are often used interchangeably, the “first overtone” is actually the “second harmonic”).

Here’s a summary of the first several harmonics present in a typical 8' Open Diapason which are often available as discrete stops to reinforce a particular harmonic of the pipe's fundamental pitch: (The ordinal number represents the harmonic number, then the equivalent pitch level is indicated, then typical Diapason family stop names):

1__8’ _____Principal

2__4’ _____Octave

3__2 2/3’__Twelfth

4__2’ _____Fifteenth (Super Octave)

5__1 3/5’__Seventeenth

6__ 1 1/3’__Nineteenth

7__ 1 1/7’__Flat Twentyfirst (Septieme)

8__1’_____Twenty second (Super Super Octave)

9__8/9’___None (pronounced “no nay”, not “nun”)

The Reuter pipe organ in the Orem Utah Sunset Heights stake center only has 3 thumb pistons for presets, with no multiple-memory levels and no "set" button, which confuses most organists. The first organist that I talked to there complained that there was no way to change the presets. I told him how to do it, but warned him that because there are only 3 presets and no memory options, he should probably get together with the other organists first and have all come to a consensus about what they want on each of the 3 pistons.

Setting the presets on this organ is a "hold and set" system. You press and hold whichever piston you want to set, then with your other hand, turn stops on or off until you have the desired combination of stops. Then release the piston, and it should be set.

 As if the drought on combination presets was not troubling enough, there is another very major oddity about this organ: It has no couplers! No "intramanual" couplers (meaning no Swell to Swell unison, 16’, or 4’), and no "intermanual" or inter-divisional couplers either—(meaning no Swell to Great, no Swell to Pedal, and no Great to Pedal couplers). There is ample borrowing among the divisions to more or less compensate for the lack of couplers, but it is a strange peculiarity that I’ve not seen in any other instrument of this size.  —Blaine Olson    

Utah Valley Pipe Organs Highlight: Orem Sunset Heights Stake Center

by Blaine Olson

September 2023

The Sunset Heights Stake Center is located at 1260 South 400 West, near UVU, atop the hill just northeast of the Orem Walmart.  The chapel there is adorned with one of the most unique organs I have seen to date.  Much of the information I’ve seen posted online about this organ is very wrong, so I will make an extra effort to set the record straight here… starting with setting the record straight on the claim made by the Organ Historical Society that this organ was built in 1974 by the Reuter Organ Company of Lawrence, Kansas. The nameplate on the organ clearly shows 1972 as the build date, not 1974.

The 1972 11-rank Reuter pipe organ in the Orem Sunset Heights Stake Center is a lot different from any other organ in the Valley.  To begin with, it has no couplers of any kind:  no intra-manual (no Swell to Swell nor Great to Great) and no inter-manual (Swell to Great, Swell to Pedal, Great to Pedal) couplers!  However, there is ample borrowing to pretty much compensate for a lot of this, so perhaps it is not a real major issue.

However, the availability of ample preset options is a very different story. There are only 3 thumb pistons and no choice of memory levels.  This severely limits what can be programmed into the pistons— especially considering that the same 3 pistons have to be shared among all organists in all the wards that use the instrument!

On my second visit to this site, the organist in one of the wards shared with me his frustrations about this limited ability to set his own presets.  In fact, he was of the impression that the presets were not even re-programmable, since there is no “set” piston anywhere on the organ.  I took the time to show him how to reprogram the pistons, but cautioned him that he should first meet with the other organists that use the organ, since any changes made are going to affect their use of the pistons as well.  If you ever run across a system like this, this is the way to set the pistons:

This is what is called a “hold and set” system.  There is no “set” piston, so to program any piston, you must press and continue to hold the piston to be programmed, then (while continuing to hold the piston), select the stops you want programmed into that piston by manually switching them on— or off, as the case may be.  Once you have all the stops selected that you want on that piston, you can release the piston, and the stops are now programmed the way you chose.  Contrary to what has been said in one online post, these presets are NOT mechanical.  They are settable electromagnetic, “hold and set” pistons.  There is, of course, a general cancel piston in the normal position below the Great keyboard.

The organ has only one toe piston, which was intended for Full Organ… but which has been disconnected. Apparently a repair order was sent in to have this fixed, but the repairman left a note for the organist claiming that in order to repair this issue, the entire organ would have to be rewired:  console, chests, relays— the works.  Although that may sound like an excuse to get out of doing the requested repair, it may actually be true!  If the organ was built with cloth-insulated wiring, it would no longer conform to current national electrical codes, and all that waxy cotton-insulated wiring would need to be upgraded to current electrical standards.  Still, if current electrical codes were ignored, it might not be a difficult fix, but in my opinion, a better use of funds would be to replace the puny pitiful prehistoric piston preset problem with a state of the art combination action system that could also include new digital voices and multiple memories managing many magical midi miracles and more.  Record/playback anyone?  Digital chimes for Christmas worship enhancement?

The expression shades move individually (one at a time when opening or closing), and the organ seemed to have a very pleasant sound overall, though not overly powerful by any means.  I thought the Fagotto was a little too anemic to provide a proper crown of fire to a full chorus, and I was VERY disappointed that there was not a 16’ extension of this gentle Reed in the Pedal!  Sometimes you need just a hint of fire at 16’ pitch, and the 8’ pitch alone does not do justice to the Pedal department.

The 16’ Bourdon is an extension of the 8’ Gedeckt in the Great, while the 16’ Dolce Bass is actually a downward extension of the Gemshorn in the Swell.  I thought it was difficult to get a good balance between Pedal stop choices (they are all borrowed from the manuals) and many registrations I tried in the manuals.  Perhaps the addition of a few digital voices in the Pedal would be prudent.

The stop action magnets (SAMs) are “rockers,” meaning they have a center pivot like a “teeter totter” or seesaw, as opposed to tilting downward when “on”.  They have a firmer (stiffer) feel than most organs with this type of stop action switches, but that’s okay.

Many of the pipes in the lower octave of the 8’ Principal were very slow of speech (just like Moses), which I found to be distracting, but I liked the tone quality produced by the Principals.

Although I thought the voicing was perhaps a little on the anemic side for a stake center organ, I did think the organ had a sweet overall singing quality that was not at all screechy or overpowering— Nor was it overly chiffy (like a Wicks I had played earlier in the day)— except for the slow of speech Principal basses.  I would like to have seen some open flutes or Spitzflutes with Flute Celestes, but that’s ‘cuz I’m spoiled and like open flutes on every organ.

For the more part, this organ was enjoyable to play and hear, and I definitely think it could be a real treasure with a few digital upgrades (such as a few more 16’ and 32’ Pedal stops, including Reeds, plus a much-needed upgraded multi-memory combination action system, and maybe even some digital chimes).

By the way, the name Reuter is pronounced “roy-der”—  not “roo-ter”!   Some of the Balcom and Vaughan (of Seattle) organs actually used Reuter parts, because Balcom and Vaughan were also Reuter distributors at one time and so they had a lot of Reuter parts in their shop’s inventory.  This is why the 1954 Ogden Tabernacle organ, a Balcom & Vaughan, had a Reuter console, which is now in my home. 

Utah Valley Pipe Organ Highlight: Orem Utah North Stake Center

by Blaine Olson

The congregations that meet in the Orem Utah North Stake Center (home of some “Timpanogos Park” wards) are treated to a very beautiful pipe display with wonderful symmetry... something that always catches my eye and holds my interest!  This beautiful building is located at 1000 North Main Street in Orem, and is typical of the trapezoidal-shaped stake center chapels that were built in the 1960s and '70s. 

While the console of this 1974 Wicks organ does not have an overabundance of stops, that is due in part to the fact that there is not as much borrowing in this organ as there is in most of the pipe organs in the Valley.  But at only 10 ranks, there is almost always going to be at least a little borrowing, especially for the upperwork (including mutations and mixtures), and this organ is no exception.  

The console uses the typical "tongue" tabs for stop action switches (SAMs), with spring-loaded keyboards (not tracker-touch), and uses a key switch instead of a "set" piston for setting the presets.  The organ only has 4 memory levels, with 4 General thumb pistons (1, 2, 3, 4) and 4 General toe studs (5, 6, 7, 8), for a total of 8 preset options per memory level.  The organ also has Great to Pedal and Sforzando toe studs.

I found it quite interesting that the only mutation in this instrument is a 1 1/3’ Quint (which represents the 6th harmonic of the 8’ series—which is often the strongest element in the timbre of many Trompettes— even stronger than the fundamental in many cases).  That’s much of what gives a Trumpet its “reedy timbre.” The presence of a 1 1/3’ stop as the only mutation is a bit unusual, as most organs would have a 2 2/3’ pitch, which is the 3rd harmonic of an 8’ stop. 

Many organists say the advantage of having a 1 1/3’ stop is that when added to the ensemble, it seems to create the illusion of a soft Reed being added to the chorus!  Personally, I agree, and prefer the 1 1/3’ stops over the 2 2/3’ examples much of the time.  However, without the 2 2/3’ we cannot create a synthetic Orchestral Oboe (8’ String + 2 2/3’ String), or a synthetic Clarinet (8’ Gedeckt or other stopped flute + 2 2/3’ + 1 3/5’).  The 1 1/3’ Quint on this instrument is actually borrowed from the 4’ Nachthorn, so it is fluty in nature.

Overall, I thought that this organ was more pleasing to look at than to listen to.  There seemed to be a little too much chiff (which is typical of low wind pressure, open-toe voicing of Wicks organs built during the years that John Sperling acted as their tonal director), and I didn’t feel like the choruses on this organ were very balanced, the 2’ Principal and the Mixture in the Great overpowering the 8’ and 4’ stops too much.  The 8’ Fagot could not blend all that well with a fuller chorus, and was too much on the thin side, I thought.  It lacked fire and assertiveness, and this organ would have been better served by a Trompette of moderate scale, in my opinion.

The 16’ Sub Bass is the only 16’ stop in the Pedal, and is way too soft to support any decent chorus.  A couple of digital 16’ stops plus a 32’ would greatly improve the Pedal department.

I was disappointed that the 4’ Prestant in the Great was merely an extension of the 8’ Principal.  I believe that an independent 4’ Octave would help with the “balance” problem in the Great.

In General, I was very disappointed with how the organ sounded.  Still, this organ has the advantage of having a soul, as all pipe organs do, as opposed to merely being a simulator, nothing more… And the pipe display is very easy on the eyes!  I truly believe that this organ would benefit greatly from a digital enhancement to fill in the gaps and extend the capabilities of the instrument.  It could also be improved simply by softening the 2’ Principal in the Great a wee bit, and by adding an independent 4’ Octave… (call it 4’ Octave or 4’ Prestant).

Photo below

A side view of the pipe display reveals that many of the trebles are sandwiched between taller pipes, making it impossible to see them from a front view.

***

If you are aware of any rebuild projects scheduled for organs in our Valley, please pass along the info to me at PipeOrganGuy1@gmail.com so we can monitor and report the progress of the rebuild, so all of our organists in the area can learn of what's happening in our little Valley.  We do our best to keep the UtahValleyPipeOrgans.org website updated, while also documenting the organs for historical purposes, but it is a daunting task!  We need your help!  The website contains both before- and after-photos of the organ, something that several people have asked about with regards to the Provo Tabernacle Austin organ, for example.  

Utah Valley Pipe Organs Highlight: 

 Payson Utah

Mountain View 

Stake Center Organ 

by Blaine Olson 

The Payson Utah Mountain View Stake Center (formerly the Payson Utah East Stake) is home to the other pipe organ which, along with the Salem Stake Center a few short miles to the east, may arguably be called the most remote pipe organ venue in the Valley — at least on the southern end of the Valley, anyway— (residential organs excluded).  (The Salem Stake Center was featured in the November 2023 newsletter).  

The beautiful Mountain View Stake Center is located just about a half block south of the main drag through town (State Road 198, also known as 100 North) on 600 East, across the street from the Peteetneet Museum and Cultural Arts Center (the old Peteetneet School).

So, what’s so neat about Peteetneet?

The Peteetneet Museum is named after Chief Peteetneet, the indigenous clan leader of a band of Tumpanawach Utes.  The museum now serves multiple civic purposes. The building houses a Daughters of the Utah Pioneers museum of pioneer artifacts, the Payson Historical Society, and the Peteetneet Arts Council as well as many community art and dance classes and events.  I thought it was quite special to have such a wonderful historic museum just across the street from a beautiful chapel with a very eye-catching symmetrical display of pipes.

The chapel itself is built in the trapezoidal design that was so common for stake centers built in the mid-1960s thru the ‘70s (with non parallel side walls).  This is good.  This shape of chapel is said to be more “music-friendly,” as chapels with parallel walls are more prone to standing waves (tonal dead spots).  This phenomenon occurs when a traveling sound wave collides with a reflected sound wave of the same frequency that is now traveling the opposite direction, the two waves then cancelling each other out, as they are out of phase with each other.  By eliminating parallel walls in the room, traveling sound waves are less likely to reflect off the walls in ways that cause collisions in which they are cancelled out by their own reflection.  This problem of standing waves is particularly an issue in the higher frequencies, such as 2’ pitches and above.  So this trapezoidal shape of all these stake centers is a good thing, and was a product of careful acoustical engineering.

About the Payson organ:

The 1975 eleven-rank Wicks organ has a drawknob console, which is my personal preference for console style.  However, the layout (stop placement) bends all the rules and makes no sense, I thought.  AGO standards for drawknob arrangement are less well-defined than their standards for tilt tablet or rocker switches, but the drawknob placement standard does say that the lowest pitches within a division are to be placed in the lowest positions of the drawknob jambs.  So any 16’ stops in the manuals, if any, should be placed at the bottom or lower levels of the drawknob jambs, with 8’ drawknobs above the 16s, and the 4’ drawknobs above the 8’ knobs, then the 2 2/3’ then 2’ and so forth, with Mixtures, then Reeds, above them all.  (By the way, It is not necessary to label the Reeds in red!  That is a carryover from theater organ styling, and a few builders still label their Reed stops in red— but you won’t find red Reeds on the Tabby Organ).

The Payson organ has a very unconventional placement of the stops.  Looking at the Swell drawknobs, we see that the lowest drawknob in the group is the 8’ Gamba— but  that location is where most organists would expect to find the loudest 8’ stop in the division, not the softest.  The expected stop in that position would be the 8’ Rohrflöte on this organ.  (If the organ had an 8’ Diapason or Geigen Principal in the Swell, then the drawknob for that stop would go where the 8’ Gamba  currently is, as it is louder than the Gamba).  But on this particular organ, the 8’ Rohrflöte should be in that lower left position, as per AGO guidelines. 

To further frustrate the organist, even the drawknob for the 4’ Koppelflöte occupies a lower position on the jamb than the 8’ Rohrflöte!  Confusing and counterintuitive!

The same situation exists in the Pedal:  the drawknob for the 4’ Holzgedeckt occupies a lower position than the 8’ Rohrflöte, and the 8’ Gamba, which is softer than the Rohrflöte, is also in a position below the Rohrflöte instead of above it.  Confusing.  Many organists prefer to have all of the stops within a certain family of sound lined up vertically with each other, but this is not done on this organ either.  It’s all jumbled.

The Great drawknob placement is somewhat better, not nearly as confusing as the Swell and the Pedal stop placements.

The organ features a rotary switch to choose between 8 memory levels, each with 8 General thumb pistons plus 4 General toe studs (for choices 9, 10, 11, and 12).  It also has a Sforzando thumb piston, duplicated by a toe stud, and a Great to Pedal thumb piston, duplicated by a toe stud.  There is a green LED readout to indicate position of the Crescendo shoe.

On my 4th visit to this location, I talked with an organist who told me that whenever she uses the crescendo pedal, 2 notes (d# and a# in the central portion of the keyboard) “go flat” afterward.  She meant that those 2 keys were playing one semitone lower than normal after using the crescendo pedal.  Yet, I could not duplicate that problem.  My question for her was, “Why are you using the crescendo pedal to register hymns in the first place?”  We had a little talk about the use of the crescendo pedal.

I found the crescendo on this instrument to be very disappointing anyway, as, instead of very smooth, small increments of volume growth, there were sudden huge jumps in volume upon gradually applying the crescendo pedal.  Not well designed.  Soft stops are usually programmed to join the ensemble ahead of louder stops when using the crescendo pedal, in order to make a smoother, more gradual (and graceful) crescendo.

Although the General Cancel piston worked fine 3 weeks ago, it was completely inoperative as of this final visit.  (I explained to the organist how to report this to the FM group).

The keyboards are spring-loaded (not tracker-touch), and Swell shades operate individually (as opposed to incrementally in unison). The organ is rather gently voiced for a stake center organ.  I sat through a stake conference there recently, and was baffled by the lack of enthusiasm during the hymn singing.  People just weren’t singing.  At first I thought it was because maybe the organist could benefit from some suggestions on better registration options.  But after playing the organ myself, I realized that, while better registration certainly would have made a big difference, the simple fact that the organ is voiced so gently may have also played a role.  Probably a little of both.  People are always afraid of “out singing the organ”— whereas it has been shown that in church units where the organ is easily heard (largely through prudent registration), folks tend to be more likely to sing with enthusiasm.

The distribution of the organ’s 11 ranks is as follows:  (core rank name in bold, followed by pitches and divisions where stop is available):

• Rohrflöte (8’ & 2 2/3’ in Swell,  8’ in Pedal, 4’ in Great), 

• Gamba (8’ & 4’ in Swell, 8’ in Great & Pedal)

• Gamba Celeste (8’ Swell & Great)

• Koppelflute (4’ & 1 3/5’ in Swell) 

• Blockflute (2’ & 1’, in Swell)

• Trompette (8’ Swell, Great, Pedal, plus 16’ & 4’ in Pedal)

• Principal (8’, 4’, 2 2/3’ Great only)

• Holzgedeckt (8’ Great, 4’ Pedal & continuation of SubBass from CC upward)

• Octave (2’ Great, independent)

• Quinte 1 1/3’ (Great, independent)

• Principal (different rank from the one in the Great— 8’ & 4’, Pedal only, independent of manual ranks).

The bottom 12 notes of the Pedal SubBass and Lieblich Gedeckt are from 12 individual polyphonic bass pipes, with the SubBass, at and above CC (which is low 8’ C) continued in the Great’s Holzgedeckt, while the Lieblich Gedeckt is continued in the Swell’s Rohrflöte.

Special teaching moment: “polyphonic bass”pipes

A lot of organs will have two 16’ stop tabs but only one actual set of 12 pipes behind them for the notes below low (8’) CC.  One of the stops produces a softer rendition of the same tone quality as the other, and when both stops are activated, the resulting sound is louder than either stop alone.  It’s what is called “polyphonic bass,” and it only works on pipes below 8’ pitch.  Here’s how and why:

The bottom octave of a 16’ rank of pipes can be made with 2 different wind inlets, one allowing a little more wind into the pipe than the other.  Each inlet is controlled by its own stop tablet on the console, so you may have a tab marked Sub Bass and another marked Lieblich Gedeckt, but they both use the same pipe body for those lowest 12 notes.  This only works on stops of 16’ pitch or lower, and only in pipes below the CC pitch  because the pipe’s tuning is going to go slightly sharp with the inclusion of additional wind, but at those low frequencies, the human ear is not as sensitive to slight variations in pitch as it is in the 8’ or 4’ range, so people don’t realize that the pipes have gone ever-so-slightly sharper when additional volume of wind is applied.  Organ builders can take advantage of that fact to produce more variety in Pedal stop choices without actually adding more pipes.  Again: the polyphonic pipes will only occur in the bottom 12 pipes of the 16’ rank (from CCC to BBB), or the bottom 24 pipes of a 32’ rank (from CCCC to BBB).  Above that point, the stop is usually continued as borrows from another stopped or half-covered Flute rank.  For example, from the 13th note upward, the 16’ Sub Bass may consist of a Gedeckt in the Great, while the 16’ Lieblich Gedeckt may be continued in the Swell’s Rohrflute from CC upward, while both stops share common polyphonic bass pipe bodies for the bottom 12 notes, saving space and the expense of adding additional pipes.  This is exactly the setup in this Payson organ (and many others in the Valley as well).

Some organs have an independent 16’ Pedal rank, with 32 or 44 or 56 pipes, but with the bottom 12 notes sounding from polyphonic bass pipes, with  the softer of the stops being continued from CC upward as a borrow from an 8’ Rohrflute or Gedeckt in the Swell.

The reason we don’t see polyphonic pipes in 8’ pitches and above is because those pitches are bordering the part of the spectrum where human hearing is most sensitive and accurate;  we would notice the faster beating that occurs with increased wind pressure (above where the pipes were tuned at).

Conclusion:

I thought the Rohrflöte on this organ sounded too much on the “quinty” side (too much 3rd harmonic), for my personal taste, but was not nearly as rancid as the Rohrflute on the Orem Cascade Stake Center organ.  Still, it lacked the smoothness I hear in many Chimney Flutes.  When played in combination with other stops, that stronger-than-normal 3rd harmonic added so much “quintiness” to the ensemble that it almost sounded like a soft Clarinet had been added to the ensemble. 

When attempting to make a synthetic Clarinet, (8’ stopped or half-covered Flute + 2 2/3’ and 1 3/5’), I found the 1 3/5’ Tierce needed to complete the “recipe” was stronger than desired for the ideal effect.  If the Rohrflöte was just a wee bit louder and not quite as “quinty” and the Tierce was a little softer, we could simulate a fairly decent Clarinet.

When attempting to make a synthetic Orchestral Oboe (8’ String + 2 2/3’ String) we lack the 2 2/3’ String needed for the ideal construction, and the Nazard on this organ (from the Rohrflöte) did not do the attempt justice either, as there is too much fundamental in the Flute mutation stops to accurately produce an Orchestral Oboe.

The Trompette at Payson sounded better than the one on the Salem Stake Center organ, in my humble opinion, but I’ve heard better.  Many Wicks Trompettes are made with narrow-scaled resonators, which chokes out a lot of the fundamental the same way a narrow flue pipe (String) chokes out a lot of fundamental because of the additional friction a sound wave traveling through a narrow space encounters as compared to a less-restrictive space.

Although not my idea of an ideal organ, I nonetheless liked this instrument, and saw a lot of potential here.  They just need to get that GC piston fixed!  (And I’d prefer a Spitzflute to that quinty “Roar Fluke”)!

This is an old Wicks, opus 3607, 2 manuals, 4 ranks, 283 pipes, from the mid 50's from a church in Ogden. I bought it in 1990 and digitized the console and chests. I moved to West Mountain (Payson) and lost the 10' ceiling in the corner of the garage, so the longer pipes aren't setup here. It's now part of a virtual pipe organ (5 Grandorgue + 1 Wicks) that can be played from the Wicks console through a Microsoft Windows program. —Rob Stillmar

Utah Valley Pipe Organs website used to help someone in drastic need

The most interesting thing happened this morning. I received a frantic call at 8:40 from a friend who lives in the Pleasant Grove Utah Grove Creek 2nd Ward, saying that she had been asked to sub for the organist in sacrament meeting, which began in 20 minutes at 9:00 a.m! She didn't expect to see the organ rebuilt with a new console and tons of new digital voices. She was calling me while she was seated at the console.

I quickly brought up the Utah Valley Pipe Organs website on my phone so I could tell her specifically which stops to choose. I asked her for the names of the congregational hymns and set her up on the Great with the pedal coupler for the hymns, and on the Swell (manuals only) for prelude and postlude. Two hymns were jubilant, and two were prayer hymns. I told her to remove the 8' and 2' principals on the Great for the prayer hymns and to use them for the jubilant hymns. We were finished talking by 8:50, and we hung up.

Later, she texted me: "Thank you so much for your help this morning! I was a little panicky when I lifted up the cover and saw a whole new organ. Your calm demeanor was very soothing, and as you walked me through which stops I needed, you gave me confidence. Thanks again for letting me interrupt your morning. It all turned out well."

Needless to say, the website came in extremely handy! This project has turned out to be a very good thing, and I'm glad we did it. Thanks, Jim, for encouraging me, and thanks, Blaine, for inspiring me to keep going. —Mike Carson

The following photos of the facade, console, and stop rails were taken before the 2024 refurbishment.

• Utah Valley Pipe Organs

Highlight:

Pleasant Grove Timpanogos Stake Center

by Blaine Olson 

Terrific news!  The long-awaited refurbishment of the 9-rank Wicks pipe organ in the Pleasant Grove Timpanogos Stake Center is finally complete, and oh what a difference now, versus the original instrument!  Built in 1970 as Wicks opus 5054, the organ, which was paid for in part by funds raised by the members of the stake at that time, was long overdue for a major overhaul. The refurbishment took place between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2024.

Located at 800 North 100 West in Pleasant Grove, the Timpanogos Stake Center has a huge chapel—and as such, is a perfect location for a pipe organ. In fact, I believe that an organ twice the size of the original one would have been more fitting for that particular chapel than the tiny 9-rank instrument that was actually installed there.  So, needless to say, the addition of several new digital stops to the organ to fill in some of the gaps was a welcome blessing!

To help organists from the stake better understand all the new features and how best to take advantage of them, on Saturday, December 28, 2024, Jeff Karren (from Anderson Organ Works) taught a two-hour orientation class on the newly-refurbished instrument.  Jeff explained that the console had been removed from service for 6 weeks and taken to the Anderson shop, where the wood was completely refinished and the electronics/electrical components updated, with several new stop action magnets (SAMs)— that is to say, stop switches—added to accommodate the new digital voices that were being added to supplement the existing pipe voices.  Even the bench was refinished and retrofitted with a height-adjustment mechanism.

All 524 speaking pipes were meticulously revoiced to speak with a smoother, less “pseudo-Baroque” tone quality.  (See last month’s newsletter article about the Provo Stake Center).  The new digital stops and other changes that were added to the stop rail include:  

Pedal

32' Contra Violone

16' Principal

16 Contra Trompette (previously 16' Posaune)

 8' Trompette

 Bass Coupler

Swell 

 2 2/3' Nasard (previously 2 2/3' Nasat)

1 3/5' Tierce

16' Contra Trompette

  8' English Horn

  4' Clarion

Great

16' Gemshorn

  8' Salicional (borrowed from Swell-- omitted on revised Great)  

  8' Melodia (composite borrow-- actual pipes)

  8' Unda Maris II  (a 2-rank Celeste stop)

      Mixture III  (originally Mixture II)

Unfortunately, and much to the dismay of organists in the stake, no chimes were added, as the MISC (Musical Instrument Selection Committee) did not approve that particular addition. 

The original combination action had only 3 levels of memory (A, B, C), with 5 thumb pistons (duplicated by toe studs), for a grand total of 15 preset combinations to be shared among all organists.  Now, organists can choose from 300 levels of memory, with each memory level hosting 10 General thumb pistons and another 5 General presets on toe studs (15 Generals total x 300 levels of memory).  There are no divisional presets.

Memory level number one has been preprogrammed for a variety of combinations, each successive piston programmed to bring on more stops than the previous one, beginning with combinations suitable for preludes on pistons 1 through 3, postludes on pistons 2 through 6, most hymns on pistons 3 through 8, and “special occasions” (very loud) on pistons 6 through 10.

In similar manner, memory level number 2 is preprogrammed for times when the organist wants to play with one hand on the Swell and the other on the Great, to create a "solo" effect:  pistons 1 through 5 are for solo on Swell, while pistons 6 through 10 are programmed for solo on Great.

One new feature that really captivated the class was the record/playback feature.  Jeff showed everyone how to record themselves during practice, then go out into the congregational area and listen to what the organ will sound like in different parts of the chapel, as it plays back exactly what the organist just played.  Jeff showed us how to record, playback, save, retrieve, and erase the recording.  The playback can be set up to allow several seconds for the organist to walk to the back of the chapel before actually beginning the playback, so the organist has time to select a spot somewhere in the chapel, and still hear the entire recording… or may choose to wander around the chapel and listen to what the organ sounds like in different areas.  The organist then has a better idea as to any registration or volume changes that may be desired.  Of course, the organ is going to sound a lot different when 200 warm bodies fill the space and absorb much of the sound than it did when the chapel was empty, but it’s a starting point anyway.

Jeff also explained how to use the transposer.  On an occasion a month earlier, I had already explored the capability of the transposer for myself, and was extremely surprised to find that it is capable of transposing up or down 16 semitones each way from the note as played!  That’s twice the capability of most transposers— each way!  In other words, 4 times the number of available pitch levels as most transposers!  That translates to 33 possible pitch levels for a single key playing a single stop!  (That's 16 semitones below the note as played, zero transposition, and 16 semitones above the note as played)!  Keep in mind, however, that since no pipes were added to compensate for transposition, you are NOT going to get that lower-than-128’ Contra Mega Earthquake that you sometimes wish you had to wake up the inattentive congregants by selecting a 32’ stop and transposing it downward as far as possible.

How do you get a new “pipe stop” (not digital) without actually adding new pipes?

One very clever modification to the organ involved the addition of another pipe stop, but without adding any actual pipe ranks.  We are talking about stops comprised of actual pipes, not digital voices.  It’s a clever extension of the concept of “borrowing,” in which ranks are made to play on multiple divisions, even multiple pitches.

You may recall from last month’s (December 2024) newsletter article highlighting the Provo (Slate Canyon) Stake Center organ how they had made a modification to the organ’s relay (where the electrical switching takes place) which allowed the 4’ Nachthorn to be played also at 8’ pitch, which they then labeled “Flute Ouverte.”  Thus, they had an additional 8’ Flute in the Swell (with a different timbre than the existing Rohrflute) without actually having to add any new ranks.  Well, friends, something similar was done with the Timpanogos Stake instrument!  Check this out:

Like many pipe organs, the 16-foot Sub Bass in the Pedal of the Timp organ only uses stopped wooden pipes on the bottom 24 pipes, and beginning at note 25 (which corresponds to the lowest note of a 4’ rank, or Tenor C of an 8’ rank), the pipes continue up another 32 notes using open wood pipes.  These (4’ pitch) pipes are often constructed with inverted lips, similar to a Hohlflote or Melodia, and produce a lovely, bright, clear Flute tone that stoppered pipes cannot duplicate.  (Remember:  “inverted lip” means that the bevel of the upper lip is on the inside of the body of the pipe, rather than the outside, like most flue pipes have).

Because the Timpanogos organ has this very type of Pedal rank, where there are 32 open wood pipes already in place, it was an opportunity to take those 32 open Pedal pipes and use them as a starting point for creating an additional stop for the manuals, with pipes borrowed from the Nachthorn (an open metal Flute) to fill in the upper-most notes— the notes above where the open wood pipes end.  Because those top notes speak at a pitch that is above the range of maximum efficiency for human hearing, the difference in timbre between the wood pipes and the metal ones is not as noticeable as it would be in the part of the spectrum just an octave lower.

So now the organ has a new 8’ Melodia stop, made up entirely of existing Pedal and Swell pipes!  And because this "Melodia" is assigned to the Great (even though its pipes are in the Swell chamber), our new Great Melodia is expressive, meaning that we can control its volume by means of the Swell shoe.

Why this creative borrowing works:

As a professional audiologist, I am sometimes asked about how pipe organs can use stopped wooden pipes in the bottom octave of a Chimney Flute, as an example, with the construction of the next 3 octaves being the typical “half-covered” metal Chimney Flute, and the top octave(s) may even be open metal pipes.  The answer is:  the lowest octave and the highest octave are both outside that part of the frequency spectrum where human hearing is most efficient, so if the pipes are skillfully voiced, it may be difficult to distinguish for certain the exact point where the pipes go from stopped to half-covered, and from half-covered to open.  Although the ability to distinguish between timbres is not an exact science and varies from person to person, the general rule is this:  human hearing is most sensitive and accurate in the 3 octaves between Tenor C and the “c” 2 octaves above Middle “c”.  Those are the same 3 octaves where most of our manual notes for hymn accompaniment are played and where human singing is possible.  So if we were to substitute the lowest 12 notes of an “open rank” with properly-voiced stopped pipes, and in similar fashion substitute the top octave (or perhaps the top 17 notes) with cleverly-voiced totally open pipes, it may be very difficult for most people to hear any obvious point at which the pipe structures change.  So, by taking advantage of this scientific fact, organ builders sometimes create a whole new stop simply by mixing pipes from other existing ranks to fill in the uppermost and lowermost octaves of their new stop.  In the photos below, notice that the top 7 pipes of the Trompette are actually open metal, not Reed pipes— yet people cannot hear any obvious difference in timbre between the top Reed (high “f”) and the open metal (high “f#”) just above it.  

So, the new 8’ Melodia in the Great of the Timpanogos organ really does use pipes that are Melodia in nature for 32 of the most important notes for an 8’ stop, as far as human hearing goes.  Enough of the spectrum is covered by the open wood pipes to convince our brains that the Melodia is a 10th rank for this organ— and it certainly does sound like that— but it is actually a very clever borrow!  (The idea to do this on the Timp organ was actually developed/engineered by one of the Tabernacle organ technicians)!

Before the organ training session ended, Jeff handed out a very informative illustrated summary card to everyone.  The sheet was professionally done, printed on both sides and on heavy-duty card stock, so it should last a good long time.  He left one at the organ console.  This informative card reviews many of the things Jeff had covered in his class, such as how to use the transposer, record/playback, setting pistons, and also included a brief history of the organ.  It also includes charts to illustrate how memory levels 1 and 2 are preprogrammed.

Got organ shoes?  Timp does.

That brings up another point.  I really appreciated that throughout the presentation to the organists, Jeff always used correct terminology.  It’s not a gas pedal or a loud pedal, it’s a Swell shoe.  Both the Crescendo pedal and the expression pedals are properly known as “shoes”.  And irregardless of what you may think, there ain’t no such thing as “foot pedals,” nor is “irregardless” a word!  So there!

One final "foot" note:

Someone recently asked me, "How soon is too soon to begin teaching children to play the organ?"  Well, Jeff Karren had his wife and 11-month-old twins (boy and girl) with him that Saturday, and we all were amazed at how fascinated the little girl was with playing the pedals!  She demonstrated that she knew that if she smacked a toe stud hard enough or pushed a preset button, then pressed down the low CC# pedal key (the second-lowest note), she could get a most delightful rumble that was worth dancing to.  And she danced on the Pedals!  And when her dad pressed the General Cancel piston, she knew how to get her registration back in service in short order.  What do you wanna bet she grows up to be a terrific organist?  Her daddy is CAGO certified, so she already has a good teacher!

Notice that the top 7 pipes of the Trompette (left side of photo) are actually open spotted metal pipes rather than actual Reed pipes, a very common practice.  Because their pitch is outside the range of maximum sensitivity for human hearing, it is nearly impossible to tell the difference in timbre between the high "f" Reed pipe and the high "f#" flue pipe next up in pitch. Also in this photo, notice the Rohrflute (with the blue gaskets and "chimneys" sticking up from the main body of the pipe).  Notice too that the bottom 12 Rohrflute pipes do not have chimneys:  while they are still metal pipes (zinc), they are fully capped.  And because their pitch is below the area of maximum sensitivity for human hearing, the shift from capped pipes to chimneyed pipes is hardly noticeable.  The Rohrflute in this photo is sandwiched between the Salicional (towards the rear of the chamber) and its Celeste-- another standard practice.  This is to keep the pipes of these 2 similarly-voiced ranks from "fighting" each other-- interfering with each other before the sound waves have ample space to blend (and undulate) in the atmosphere. 

Utah Valley Pipe Organs Highlight:

 Provo Utah Stake Center 

1315 East 900 South, Provo 

(home to several of the “Slate Canyon” wards)

by Blaine A. Olson

The Provo Utah Stake Center (a.k.a. Slate Canyon) houses one of my favorite organs in the Valley. Some 34 years ago, when I first moved to Provo from Salt Lake, this was my stake center/meetinghouse for 3 years, and I have many fond memories of playing that pipe organ for church services and a couple of funerals.  One treasured memory is of an 82-year-old widow who told me she always came to church early "just to hear the lovely prelude music," and how it always comforted her soul— that somehow it seemed I always knew just what to play that she needed to hear that day.  From my perspective, I was just grateful for someone who listened to and appreciated my prelude music instead of talking through it, and how grateful I was for having a nice pipe organ to play it on.  Two of our more renowned organists in the Valley (Mike Ohman and Jim Kasen) still get to claim this beautiful stake center as their home.

The building:

The chapel itself is built in the trapezoidal style so common to stake centers built in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with the walls on either side of the chapel being non-parallel to the opposite-facing wall, making the chapel friendlier to high frequency sounds such as those produced by 2’ organ pipes and Mixtures.  If the walls were parallel to each other, “standing waves” could more easily form, resulting in “dead spots” where high-pitched sound waves literally collide and cancel each other out.  As more and more pipe organs were being placed into new stake centers during this era of growth, acoustical engineers worked with architects to design buildings that were more music-friendly, which is part of the reason why we see so many chapels (especially stake centers) with this trapezoidal design.  Many of the stake centers in the Valley have chapels with this design in mind.  

The original organ:

The organ was built by Wicks in 1974, and donated to the Church by the Stake President at the time, President Harold Jones. So no Church funds were involved in the purchase of this instrument.  The organ had a few somewhat uncommon features (for LDS chapel organs) that I really liked, such as an 8' Gemshorn that extended down to 16’ pitch to add a soft (but valuable) deep purr in the Pedal.  That 16’ Gemshorn adds just a wee bit of keenness to the bass that could not be achieved through the standard (less-expensive) stopped wooden 16-foot "Boredom” pipes that almost every small pipe organ has a variation of in the Pedal. The organ had only been in use for 15 years by the time I moved into the area, so even though I would like to have seen a few changes made to it, the "time for rebuild" was still a good 15 years away, at minimum.  Nevertheless, at 12 ranks, it had the resources needed to support most functions that were expected of a stake center organ— from funerals to conferences, it had sweetness and it had fire... well, sort of.   Yet, in spite of this, it was never really properly "tonally finished."  Jim Kasen shared with me the struggles he went through to get the organ properly finished tonally.

The Provo Stake Center organ was refurbished (or "overhauled," as the Church calls it) by Ron Jones Organ Company in 2003, but no stops were added and no real tonal finishing took place at that time. (Please read more about "tonal finishing" and "regulation" at the end of this article.)  It wasn't until 2013 that Jim Kasen was able to gain some support for a tonal finishing project.  On February 27 of that year, Jim had a discussion with the FM people about the possibility of getting some much needed upgrades and voicing done on the organ— things that had been overlooked on the last rebuild.  Jim also spoke with Tabernacle organists Clay Christiansen, Bonnie Goodliffe, and Linda Margetts about the concerns with the organ, and how best to proceed.  It was at that time that Jim was encouraged to contact Ryan Ballantyne, an organ builder from Jalupa Valley, California, who has built a number of pipe organs for LDS chapels, and get a proposal from him for the needed work.  After meeting with Ryan and getting a written proposal, Jim forwarded the proposal to the FM people and to Clay Christiansen, who in turn took it to the Musical Instrument Selection Committee (MISC) for review.  MISC approved the bid and recommended that the tonal finishing take place in 2013, with the remainder of the project to take place in 2014.  However, the FM determined that there were insufficient funds to do the work in 2013, and the entire project was postponed until 2014.  Then, with the help of some individuals in Salt Lake, the project was moved into priority position, and was officially begun in April of 2014.  By July of that year, Phase I was completed, and in September of that same year, Phase II was also completed.

One of the key elements of Ballantyne's rebuild project was to raise the wind pressure in order to improve the overall sound of the organ.  To do this, he took all of the open-toe pipes that were to be retained and retrofitted them with standard toes, which allowed him to increase the wind pressure, reduce the excess chiff, and obtain a much smoother overall timbre, as well as making touchup regulation of individual pipes much easier and less risky.  Then he did some revisions and additions: 

• The original Wicks 8' Gemshorn and its Celeste were removed from the Swell and replaced with an 8' Salicional and Celeste built by Steer (preceded Skinner). This lovely set of Strings was originally from an organ in Paris, California, and was built in 1912.  

• The original Wicks 8'/4' Fagot was removed from the Swell, and replaced with a Murray Harris Oboe, which plays at 16'/8'/4'.  This Oboe was originally in the Metropolitan Community Church, in Hollywood, California.  

• A Geigen Principal which plays at 8'/4' was added to the Swell, as was a 1 3/5' Tierce.  The 4' Nachthorn was rewired to be able to play also at 8' (using the name "Flute Ouverte), with notes 1-12 borrowed from/shared with the original 8' Rohrflote.

• A 10-year-old 8' Gemshorn (built by Organ Supply) was added to the Great.  (Apparently the 12 pipes of the 16' octave were retained.  The 16' Gemshorn still plays in the Pedal, but now also plays in the Great as well).

• An 8' Trumpet was added to the Great, but also plays (unenclosed) in the Swell and Pedal.

• The relay wiring was altered significantly to allow for more borrowing and flexibility, and for an increase in rank count.  This included rewiring the circuitry for the 4' Principal in the Great to be able to serve also as a second 8' Foundation in that division.  Thus, the final product was an 8' Open Diapason (the former 8' Principal) and an 8' Principal (borrowed from the former 4' Principal, with notes 1-12 shared with the 8' Open Diapason).  The 4' Principal was then renamed 4' Prestant.  This addition of a second 8' Foundation tone to the Great added much more possibilities for the organist.

• The rebuilt organ has a net increase of 4 ranks:  it was 12 ranks in 1974, 16 ranks in 2014.

• 32 levels of memory were added to the combination action.  Preset piston count was increased to 18 thumb pistons and 6 toe studs, for a total of 24 Generals... plus additional thumb pistons for Swell to Great, Great to Pedal, Sforzando, and General Cancel, with toe studs for Great to Pedal and Sforzando.  All presets are Generals-- no divisionals.

• A set of Schulmerich "ChimeAtron" Chimes was added, with associated drawknobs mounted in the Pedal section, (even though one of them would more properly be with the Great drawknobs).  They are:  Chimes on Pedal and Chimes on Great

• The existing 16' Sub Bass in the Pedal was rewired to make a 32' Resultant, borrowing from itself to obtain the 5th that is necessary to form a Resultant.  (A special section on how Resultants work was included in a UVAGO newsletter article of March 2024, which discussed the pipe organ in Provo Married Student First Stake, North Chapel.  You can also review this article by visiting the UtahValleyPipeOrgans.org website, then looking up Provo Married Student First Stake).

The organ is one of the few organs in the Valley that has a 32’ Resultant in the Pedal.  I found that when using the 32' Resultant on the Provo Stake Center organ, a very exciting effect can be achieved by adding the 16' Gemshorn to whatever else you may have in your Pedal registration, because the 10 2/3' pitch from the Sub Bass that is meant to beat against the 16' Sub Bass is also going to beat against the 16' Gemshorn, creating a very exciting effect with just a wee bit of bite to it.

As to the Chimes: I've heard better.  There is a drawknob for Chimes on Pedal and another for Chimes on Great, both of which are located at the bottom of the other Pedal drawknobs.  These chimes are neither digital nor tubular:  they are metal rods much like what you might expect to find in a grandfather clock, which are struck by a mechanism similar to what many doorbells have, then amplified electronically.  The loudspeaker for the chimes is located inside the Swell chamber, so the Swell shades are your only means of volume control from the console, as there is no separate Chime volume control knob.  The chimes were made by Schulmerich (and called “ChimeAton”).  As it so happens, I have a very similar set of Schulmerich electro-mechanical chimes.  I’ll post a picture of what they look like inside at the bottom of this article.  The chimes consist of 25 metal rods which each have 3 weights attached, which can be adjusted up or down the length of the rod to adjust which overtones are most prevalent.  In the photo below you can see that each rod has one weight near the bottom of the rod, another about 2/3 of the way up the rod, and a third one very near the top of the rod.

My unit has 25 rods, but I only heard 24 “chimes” that worked on the Provo Stake Center organ.  Typically chimes like these start at the G below middle C and end on the G two octaves above that, but the low G did not work on the Provo organ— at least not on the day that I tried it.

More information about wind pressure will be provided in a future article.

Provo Utah Stake Center organ:  original stoplist:

Great

8'  Principal

8'  Holz Gedeckt

8'  Gemshorn

4'  Principal

4'  Gemshorn

2'  Principal

     Mixture II

Swell

8'  Gemshorn

8'  Gemshorn Celeste

8'  Rohrflote

4'  Nachthorn

2 2/3' Nazard

2'  Spitz Octave

1 1/3' Quint

8'  Fagot

4'  Clarion

Pedal

16' Sub Bass

16' Gemshorn

 8'  Principal

 8'  Rohrflote

 4'  Choral Bass

16' Fagot

 8'  Fagot

Provo Utah Stake Center organ:  current stoplist:

Great

16' Gemshorn

 8'  Open Diapason

 8'  Principal

 8'  Holz Gedeckt

 8'  Flute Ouverte (Sw)

 8'  Gemshorn

 8'  Strings II (Sw)

 4'  Prestant

 4'  Gedeckt

 2'  Principal

 II  Mixture

 8'  Trumpet

 8'  Oboe (Sw)

16' Swell to Great

 8'  Swell to Great

 4'  Swell to Great

 4'  Great to Great

Swell

16'  Rohrflute

 8'   Geigen Principal

 8'   Rohrflote

 8'   Flute Ouverte

 8'   Salicional

 8'   Voix Celeste

 4'   Principal  (ext Geigen Principal)

 4'   Nachthorn

2 2/3' Nasat

 2'   Blockflute

1 3/5' Tierce

1 1/3' Quint

16' Contra Fagotto

 8'   Trumpet (Gt)

 8'   Oboe

 4'   Oboe Clarion

16'  Swell to Swell

 4'   Swell to Swell

       Swell Unison Off

       Tremolo

Pedal

32'  Resultant

16'  Sub Bass

16'  Gemshorn

  8'  Principal Bass

  8'  Holz Gedeckt

  8'  Rohrflute (Sw)

  8'  Gemshorn

  4'  Choral Bass

  4'  Nachthorn

16'  Contra Fagotto

  8'  Trumpet

  4'  Oboe

  8'  Great to Pedal

  8'  Swell to Pedal

Chimes on Pedal

Chimes on Great

Information about "tonal finishing"

Tonal finishing involves going through the organ note by note, pipe by pipe, and making the final adjustments to each and every pipe to ensure that it speaks with the desired timbre-- matches the other pipes in the rank for proper tone quality—  and also "regulation." To achieve all this, adjustments are made to lip positions and height, languid position, ears, etc., to attain the desired timbre and volume.  The size of the room, presence of draperies and/or carpeting, and objects within the room that sound waves bounce off of— or that absorb sound-- are all taken into consideration when doing this final voicing.  

Regulation means adjusting the pipe's volume properly, with respect to the surrounding pipes, so that no one pipe sticks out as being too loud or too soft to fit in with the rest of the rank.  As we ascend the scale, each successive pipe going up the scale should be just ever-so-slightly louder than the previous pipe, without a sudden "jump" in volume.  This "crescendo" must be gradual and even.  When properly regulated, the melody note will always prevail, as it is slightly louder than the accompanying notes.  (At least that's the way Merv Brown explained it to me when I was working with him).  All of this is a critical part of tonal finishing.

With most pipes (of standard construction), this act of regulating a pipe involves either opening up or closing down the toe hole a tiny amount in order to adjust the amount of wind that enters the pipe, and therefore, how loud the pipe plays.  If the pipe is too soft, the organ technician will increase the size of the opening at the toe just a very minute amount, to allow more wind to enter the pipe, and thereby increase the volume.  Or if the pipe needs softening, he will carefully work the soft metal (lead) around the toe hole to slightly reduce the overall size of the opening, and thus restrict the amount of wind that enters the pipe.  

However, on Wicks organs of that particular time period, the company had adopted a voicing style that involved using lower wind pressures and "open toe" pipes, (or as some organ technicians call it: "toeless" pipes), with wind regulation done strictly at the mouth of the pipe instead of at the toe.  This could be quite tricky, as pipe mouths can be very tempermental, and sometimes a few thousandths of an inch one way or another can make a big difference in whether the pipe even speaks at all!  But without adjustable toe openings, regulation on Wicks organs was accomplished by pushing the lower lip inward towards the languid to reduce wind across the mouth of the pipe, or pulling the lower lip outward, farther away from the languid, to allow more wind across the mouth of the pipe.  The idea was to create a style of voicing that was common during the Baroque era, with low wind pressures.  (But Mr. J.S. Bach didn't have the luxury of having a 5 horsepower electric blower to supply wind for his organ, either).  Many organ builders claim that higher wind pressures make a pipe less susceptible to cyphers (where a piece of debris gets stuck in the valve and prevents the pallet-- that is to say, the valve-- from closing completely, allowing the pipe to sound when it is not supposed to-- often at a weaker strength, and consequently, somewhat flat also, making it difficult to identify right away.  Merv Brown believed that higher wind pressures help to blow any debris out of the way before it can jam the valve and prevent it from totally closing.  

Yet another of the less-desirable side effects of low wind pressure is that it also results in more chiff— sometimes more than what many organists feel is in good taste.  A little chiff adds character to the sound of a pipe, but too much chiff can be more of a distraction. More information about wind pressure will be provided in a future article. 

The two abbreviated ranks in the façade are the 8’ Diapason and the 8‘ Chimney Flute in the Great, starting at tenor C, with the bottom octaves of both ranks being digital voices. When activated, a thumb piston marked “pipes off ancillary on“ turns off all wind-blown pipes, and the organ becomes a standard Rodgers 788L, all digital voices. When the piston is deactivated, the pipes are on, and the metal pipes in the display supply the voices for the 4’ Choral Bass in the Pedal (borrowed from the Great 8’ Diapason), and the Great 4’ Octave is borrowed from the same rank. The 8’ Chimney Flute and 4’ Spitzflote are the wooden flutes seen in the display. I've never seen a Rodgers pipe-augmented instrument with only 2 ranks. Must be the end of the world or something. —Blaine Olson

Utah Valley Pipe Organs Highlight: Pioneer 1st & 4th Wards Chapel

by Blaine Olson

April 2024

The Pioneer 1st and 4th wards chapel in the Provo Central Stake (376 north 700 west in Provo) has a small but interesting pipe organ.  Built in 1953 by Balcom & Vaughan, a Seattle-based organ builder, the then 3-rank instrument was gifted to the Church by a family in memory of a loved one who had passed away.  The plaque on the back of the console reads: Presented by Lucille H. Meservy and family In memory of Edward Southwick Meservy Installed Feb. 20, 1953.

The organ was rebuilt in the 1980s, at which time it was expanded to the 7 ranks it is today.  As one enters the chapel, the eye is immediately drawn to the unique and intriguing pipe display, which is composed of the Great’s Principal and its Nachthorn.  This pipe display is split into 2 symmetrical parts, with a beautiful lightly-stained glass window separating the 2 sections of the pipe display.  To the left of all this we have the Swell chamber, which holds the remaining 5 ranks of the now 7-rank organ.

A "couple" of  oddities:

Although there are Swell to Great 8’ and 4’ couplers, the Swell does not couple to the Pedal at all— not via regular couplers, anyway!  However, this is not really a problem, because all of the 8’ and 4’ stops in the Swell are already available in the Pedal as borrows, including the Krummhorn!  Only the mutations and the 2’ extension of the Gedeckt do not appear as borrowed Swell stops in the Pedal.  The organ does have a Great to Pedal coupler, as well as a Great to Great 4’ coupler and Swell to Swell 4’ coupler.

The organ has no combination action, not even a General Cancel piston— which is hard to get used to for prehistoric fossils like myself.  (I’m losing 8 megabytes of RAM a day).  I found myself automatically reaching for a General Cancel piston after each piece I played, and felt frustrated and lost without it!

The organ is quite gently voiced, the Salicional being barely audible!  In fact, it’s the quietest “Salicional” I have ever heard!  I mused to myself that the stop tablet should read: “Echo Zart-Aeoline”.  (The prefix “Zart” indicates a sound even softer than “Echo”—  and "Echo" already indicates "soft"!   So “Echo Zart,”  if there were such a thing, would be softer than the quietest whisper… perhaps even quieter than a thought)!

The super-soft whisper of the Salicional may have been more acceptable if only it had a matching Céleste rank— but there are no Célestes on the organ at all— (not on purpose, anyway).  That was a major disappointment, as a Voix Céleste to sing along with the Salicional would have made all the difference in the world.  A digital Voix Céleste would do the trick, I’m sure.  It’s something to consider for the next rebuild.  (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tries to get at least 30 years out of their musical instruments between replacements or rebuilds, so this organ is probably already overdue). 

There are two 16’ stop tablets in the Pedal, but there is only one voice behind those two tabs!  (In other words, both stop tablets produce the exact same sound, which is a 12-note downward extension of the Gedeckt).  With 2 sixteen-foot Flute stop tabs in the Pedal, I was expecting to see polyphonic bass pipes controlled by those two Pedal stops, but that would be impossible on this organ as it is presently configured because there is only one 8’ stopped Flute in the entire organ (Gedeckt) from which polyphonic basses could be extended upward;  so without adding another 8’ stopped or half-covered Flute rank (such as a Rohrflute) to work with the other half of the 16’ stops as it appears on the console, we are stuck with only one bass choice, even though there are two different stop tabs.  The concept of polyphonic basses was explained in a “special teaching moment” section in the January newsletter’s feature of the Payson Mountain View Stake Center organ.  In review:  it refers to 12 pipes below CC (lowest 8' C) that have 2 wind inlets, one allowing more wind into the pipe than the other, making a second, louder sound from the exact same pipe body.  The pipes from CC upward would be borrowed from 2 different ranks of stopped or half-covered Flutes, or one rank of each—typically a Gedeckt for the louder rank and a Rohrflute for the softer one... or the louder of the 2 ranks may be from a dedicated (not borrowed) Pedal rank, like on the Orem Sharon Stake Center organ, where the 16' Subbass is an independent Pedal rank, and the 16' Lieblich Gedeckt uses polyphonic bass pipes common to both the Subbass and the Lieblich Gedeckt just in the lowest 12 notes, then is continued (from CC upward) in the softer Rohrflute, in the Swell.  

As might be expected from such a small organ, the Pioneer 1st/4th ward organ employs a lot of borrowing.   Most of the Swell’s stops also appear in the Great… but since there are only 2 ranks (unenclosed) for the Great, all of this borrowing is not a bad idea.  5 of the 7 ranks of the organ are enclosed in the Swell chamber.  Only the Great’s 8’ Principal (which also plays as a 4’ Octave) and the 4’ Nachthorn are not enclosed, and make up the unique and beautiful display.  

The Swell chamber is located on the left side of the chapel.  You might expect the right side of the chapel to house another 5 or 6 ranks, as it looks just like a mirror image of the left side— but it does not have any opening —any sound egress from whatever room may be occupying the space where the chamber would be.

The only Reed on the organ is a very soft Krummhorn— one of the very few examples of this stop in the Valley, even though it is not a rare stop.  It seems odd to me that they would use a Krummhorn (which is in the Clarinet family of Reeds) instead of a Trompette or a Fagot (gentler than Trompette, but still possessing that "heralding" sound we all crave for the fanfares in "God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand").  For an organ this gently voiced, either a Fagot or a Corno d'Amour (a partially capped, gentler Trumpet) would be ideal, as a typical Trompette might be a little overboard for such an anemic instrument... but a Krummhorn???  And a very timid Krummhorn at that!  That kinda bothered me.  Crumb horn.

Special Teaching Moment: The effect of “scale” on pipes, with focus on Krummhorn:

As we were working feverishly to build a quality educational and informative website to document the pipe organs of Utah Valley, Mike Carson and I discussed how we hoped to make the website an educational resource for beginning organists as well as the more seasoned players.  This is why we have chosen to include these "special teaching moments" in the newsletter articles, whenever a particular organ can be used to teach helpful facts about the world of pipe organs. 

To help beginning organists better understand about the rank named Krummhorn, I offer the following explanation: 

The Krummhorn is tonally related to the Clarinet and the Corno di Bassetto.  Of the 3 stop names listed in this paragraph, the Krummhorn (Cromorne on French organs) uses narrower (smaller scale) cylindrical resonators, compared to the other two.  The “skinnier” resonators of the Krummhorn choke out a lot of the lower harmonics, thereby forcing more of the pipe’s energy into the higher harmonics, resulting in a thinner, brighter sound, but still somewhat resembling a Clarinet. 

The same phenomenon is true of flue pipes:  narrower pipes somewhat dampen the lower harmonics due to the increased friction of the smaller diameter tube through which the sound wave must travel.  This is a big part of the reason why String pipes sound “thin” compared to Diapason and Flute pipes.  There is more friction fighting the sound wave in a narrow pipe, and the fundamental and lower harmonics are weakened by this friction. 

Understanding how scale affects timbre:

Think of a garden hose:  your old 3/4” diameter garden hose finally gives up the ghost, so you run over to the Home Depot or Walmart to buy a new hose... but the 3/4” hoses are out of stock, so you opt for the cheaper, “skinnier” 1/2” diameter hose.  Then, when you get home and hook it up, you notice that it does not deliver near the amount of water as the old 3/4” hose did, even though both hoses are the same length and the pressure of the water source has not changed.  So you end up taking far more time to accomplish your gardening tasks because the smaller diameter of the 1/2” hose creates more friction for the stream to pass through, which lessens the flow. 

Frustrated, you run back to the store and purchase a "fatter" one-inch diameter garden hose, and when you try it out, “Oh my goodness!  What a difference!  Big time water flow in about half the time!”  By switching to a larger diameter hose, we have less friction in the flow, which results in a greatly-improved water flow!

Well, that’s a lot like what happens in organ pipes:  because low frequency sound waves have longer wavelengths, which require the movement of a greater volume of air in order to be heard by humans (because of how the human ear is designed), they need a larger space (resonator) to travel efficiently.  Since String pipes (and Reed pipes) require more energy in the upper overtones, with not so much energy in the lower range, those particular pipes are made to create friction to dampen the deeper tones while shifting energy to the higher overtones.

Keep in mind, though, that just the scale of a pipe alone does not determine whether it will be a Flute, a Diapason, or a String.  That has more to do with “cut up”— the height of the upper lip above the lower lip, (how wide the mouth is open with relation to the inside diameter of the pipe).  Low cutup on the mouth of an organ pipe facilitates the creation of higher overtones, making a brighter sound, while high cutup (wide-opened mouths) facilitates the production of lower overtones, including the fundamental pitch— resulting in a “flutier” timbre.  Scale is just one of several factors that influence the timbre of the pipe— along with cut-up, wind pressure, shape of the pipe (cylindrical versus tapered, degree of taper, capped versus open, etc.), how absorbent the pipe’s construction materials are (wood versus metal, ratio of tin to lead, etc.)… and more!  During the "Romantic period" of organ voicing, some builders even glued tiny strips of leather to the upper lips of pipes where they wanted a very "dull" sound, as the leather discourages the formation of higher harmonics!  (I have a rank of pipes with leathered lips on my basement floor). 

So in reference to our discussion on the Clarinet family, we find our “fatter” Corno di Bassetto has a fuller, deeper tone than the others because the sound waves encounter less friction as they travel up the larger-scaled resonator, while the Krummhorn, which has the “skinniest” resonators, also has the “thinnest” timbre— and it is usually softer.  The timbre of the Clarinet lies between that of the thin-toned Krummhorn and the rich-toned Corno di Bassetto.  In flue pipes, larger scale also allows the pipe to be "pushed harder" without "flying off," if a louder sound is desired— that is to say, the larger scale makes the pipe more capable of handling more wind, which translates to a potentially louder pipe. 

There is one other stop that also belongs to the Clarinet tribe, the lesser-known Cremona.  The name Cremona is an English corruption of the word Krummhorn, but the stop itself is used as a synonym for Clarinet or Clarinet-like tone, though Irwin (Dictionary of Pipe Organ Stops) claims it is a synonym for Clarinet-Flute.

You may have noticed that smaller-scaled pipes ("skinnier" pipes) tend to be a little longer than larger-scaled pipes of identical pitch.  This, too, is because of the added friction found in the skinnier pipes.  It's a phenomenon called "end effect".  The theory is that in a pipe with less friction, the sound wave does not require the support of the resonator quite as far along the way as a comparably-pitched sound wave in a "skinny" pipe with more friction.  In the "fatter" pipe, the sound wave happily moves along its way, and keeps moving along even after leaving the confinement of the organ pipe.  “End effect,” as taught by Dr. Frank W, Asper, Tabernacle organist).  

Some final thoughts on the Pioneer 1 & 4 organ:

I really think this organ has the potential to be a truly magnificent instrument if only it could be retrofitted with a digital stop package, with the Pedal receiving a 32’ Contra Violone, 16’ Open Diapason, a soft 16’ to fill in the “extra” stop tab already in place, plus Chorus Reeds at 16’ and 8’ pitches and an 8’ Geigen Principal, 8’ Voix Céleste and an 8’ Fagot or gently-voiced Trompette in the Swell, with an 8’ Gemshorn and Gemshorn Céleste in the Great.  Of course, a combination action and an ample supply of thumb pistons and toe studs for presets should also be included, along with digital chimes.  This organ has a lot going for it.  It just needs a little boost to bring it into the 21st Century!

Utah Valley Pipe Organs Highlight: Provo East Stake Center

by Blaine Olson

February 2023

The Provo East Stake building (667 North 600 East) reopened in 2022 or early 2023 after a years-long remodel project. The 9-rank Wicks organ had been in storage (by Anderson Organ Works) for many months while the entire stake center underwent massive remodeling and upgrading, with new furnaces and air conditioning a top priority. The newly remodeled chapel is stunningly beautiful and has acoustics that tend to favor music (although this natural reverb does make listening to the sermon a little more difficult).  With so much attention to massive refurbishing to the building, I was surprised (and disappointed) that the organ itself was not retrofitted with digital voices to supplement the pipe voices that were incorporated into the organ at its inception in 1962. There were no added 32' Pedal stops, and apparently no digital voices added either.

The overall voicing is on the soft side, with gentle voices throughout. (Perhaps too gentle?)  The action seemed a little slow to me, and the release of notes was also slow. This is quite unusual for "Direct Electric" action!  This makes the organ a little more difficult to play on rapid passages, but at least it has a decent 8' Principal and independent 4' Prestant in the Great.  (The 2' Fifteenth is borrowed from the 4' Prestant). There are 3 unexpressed ranks in the Great:  the 8' Principal, 8' Dolce, and 4' Prestant. All other ranks are in the Swell box (including the 8' Hohl Flute of the Great). It is interesting that this organ has a 3-rank Mixture (derived) in the Swell, but no Mixture in the Great. The 8' Fagot is voiced very gentle and unassertive, so when playing the fanfare intro to "God of Our Fathers Whose Almighty Hand," it would be advisable to back up the Fagot with full Swell (minus the Celeste, of course). It still beats an electronic "simulator" though. (Pipe organs have a soul--even pipe organs that need help, like this one). This organ would greatly benefit from an 8' Geigen Principal, 4' Principal, and a more assertive reed (Trompette or even just an Oboe) in the Swell, even if they were digital voices, and a 32' Contra Violone would be sweet in the Pedal. Otherwise, the Swell/Great balance is way off, as the current Swell cannot compete with the Principal chorus in the Great. 

I always said we needed more info on Provo Edgemont Stake (303 W 3700 N). I still can’t give you the exact year, but I’m pretty sure it was 1988, when Thom Hinckley and his wife Tammy accompanied me to the dedicatory recital, given by Dr. Robert Tall. He played the Virgil Fox arrangement of J. S. Bach’s “Now Thank We All Our God”—a.k.a., “Bach on steroids.”

The organ itself is a Rodgers 760, pipe-augmented, with 6 ranks of true wind-blown pipes. I think. The 760 was a very common model in the ‘80s. I was able to get a shot of the serial tag, though it's a little blurry. Rodgers usually puts labels like these under the key desk, most often on the left side. Serial number is 76234, model 760, power consumption 1250 watts. 

There is one photo in the set that has most of the Great stops illuminated. Those are the stops that are pipe augmented. The others are electronic. The 4’ Octave is the son of the 8’ Principal, and the 2’  Wald Flute is the offspring of the 8’ Boredom, if I remember correctly. So there is a wee bit of unification. I think I counted 6 ranks, but I was in some very horrific pain at the time, so I didn’t have all the concentration ability I would like to have had. Rodgers offered organs like this in 4-,  6-, or 9-rank options.

Sorry I failed to see which ranks loaned their voices also to the “FOOT” Pedals, but typically Rodgers would have the 4’ Choral Bass, the 4’ Nachthorn, and the 2’ Flute borrow their voices from the Great pipes, so that’s probably the case here too. —Blaine Olson