Tuning and General Maintenance
Pipe organs should be tuned twice yearly. Tunings may be required in addition for special times of the year as Christmas and Easter as well as other church concerts schedules. This is due to the changes in climatic conditions of temperature and humidity especially in North America.
We specialize in tuning pipe organs of all manufacturers and sizes. We provide complete cleaning and maintenance as pipe organ chambers and actions become dirty. Periodically repairs and regulation is required. We have a comprehensive combination piano and organ tuning and service program for our clients. Our fees are reasonable and with over 40 years of experience we are privileged to service a wide variety of church denominations and other clients.
Tonal Design
Our Company combines the best of old world craftsmanship, experience and expertise in Organ Building. Our custom built organs, organ systems, Pipe and Digital combination organs, installations and MIDI interface offer a high degree of versatility and quality. Our organs and organ systems are built with the greatest of care to provide an instrument for accompaniment, leading congregational singing, solo performance for all schools of music from all periods, from traditional, classical as well as contemporary and orchestral voices for todays church worship, divine service music and pipe organ solutions. We have built organs and organ systems for all sizes of churches and various denominations.
These include the smallest chapel to mighty cathedrals. Each installation receives our outmost attention to craftsmanship, fine detail and passion. Our team of experts have experience in architectural, electrical, audio and building design. We have worked with many church architects and engineers for organ building, and installations in new buildings, existing buildings and renovations. Our experience with Pipe voicing and scaling creates seamless voices which are suited for the building, regardless of size. Final tonal voicing and finishing is done in the church building by our experienced voicers.
We have a great artistic passion and attention to detail in organ building, rebuilding organs, organs and organ music, choral and fine instrumental music. Our team of associates have a variety of disciplines from acoustics, audio, electronic, electrical engineering, digital and pipe organ service and maintenance. We are also experienced organists and church musicians with a wide range of disciplines.
Consoles
Through extensive travel to study organs in Europe and North America and years of experience in organ tuning and service we provide instruments of longevity.
Our Pipe organs and digital combination organs use a wide variety of select veneers, quality kiln dried lumber and hardwoods for wear and tear. All pedal boards use reinforced design and reliable sealed switching. Consoles are built with todays environmental concerns in mind reducing material waste to waste. Fine environmentally friendly finishes are used in our building and re-building processes. All custom pipe chests, woodwork, custom consoles and tone cabinets are designed, engineered and built in our own workshops. Our electrical and electronic components for console and organ switching are from the best suppliers with years of experience and use only the highest standards. We also have an extensive stock of parts and components for aftermarket service.
We service all our own instruments and systems as well as that of many manufacturers and builders. We are a complete in-house piano and organ sales and Service Company. Our standard organ consoles use AGO/RCCO specifications. Custom consoles are available with BDO and RCO pedal boards as well as European stop specifications. Our consoles use standard tracker touch keyboards with available wooden reverse colour keyboards and solid wood keyboards and are manufactured to our specifications in Europe.
We also have our own in house custom keyboard recovering shop for rebuilding, re-felting and electrical upgrades. We use the finest keyboard covers available in variety of choices. Our keyboards, pedal boards, stop tabs and draw stops use sealed switching for reliability.
Rebuilding Older Organs
As part of our customer service we can supply the following services:
- Re-leathering
- New stops
- New and updated consoles with Solid State Switching, Interface and MIDI
- New windchest or rebuilding existing chests
- New or rebuilt consoles
- Consultation
- Relocation
Construction
Our organs use the best modern and conventional materials combined with years of expertise in organ servicing and manufacturing. These are designed to suit the adverse North American climatic conditions and extremes of temperature and humidity. Our organs feature reliable, responsive actions built for years of service. Organ systems, chests, tone cabinets, custom consoles are built by craftsman in our own workshops. We use electro-pneumatic or direct electric chests as well as tracker actions upon request. We have experience servicing and rebuilding all types of Pipe Organ actions:
- Direct Electric
- Electro-pnuematic, Ventil, Universal and Pitman Chests
- Slider Chests
- Tracker Action Pipe Organs
- Tubular Pneumatic
- Combination Actions with Digital MIDI Pipe Interface
Our pipe chests use select lumber kiln dried to withstand long term use, humidity and temperature changes. The fine chest and electrical components are chosen from manufacturers with long term reputations for manufacturing quality, proven performance, serviceability, aftermarket service and parts availability. We hand choose the best leathers, sheepskin, felts and woven cloths for our mechanism’s for new instruments and our rebuilds. Blowers are silent operation and are of European manufacture in our instruments and rebuilds.
Pipework, Voicing, Tonal Regulation, and Finishing
We prefer European pipework for outstanding quality and all pipework is built to our specifications.
Voicing and adjustments are done in our workshops and final regulation in the church. We built some pipework ourselves and final finishing is done in our finishing shops using environmentally friendly durable finishes.
Wooden pipes are built with the finest select lumber and finished in our own workshops.
We will use reconditioned quality pipework providing the pipework meets our high standards of workmanship and tonal requirements for cost effectiveness in order to meet budget concerns when required.
When using digital voices and MIDI interface in new consoles and rebuilds our tonal experience and voicing skills provide seamless pipe and digital voices. For electronic and digital voices we custom build, design and engineer our own organ tone cabinets and organ systems to the highest standards of excellence for optimum sound quality. The means to this end is the most “Realistic Pipe Organ Sound.
Tracker Organs
With our years of service experience we restore as well as can provide and build tracker or mechanical action organs. Mechanical tracker actions using today’s most up to date materials are used in consideration of the adverse climatic changes in North America.
Chimes, Tower Carillons and Bells
We build our own Schmidt Classique Carillon systems with high end components and powerful amplification for outdoor and tower installations. We also supply Automatic Carillon systems from select manufacturers. We offer the best in installation, sales and aftermarket service for these instruments. We can install either acoustic or digital chimes in various configurations with high quality and true bell like tone quality from only select manufacturers of the highest standards of excellence. We would be happy to give you brochures as well an estimate for installation subject to appraisal.
Service
We provide all aftermarket parts and services for our organs and installations.