Hi friends,  To all who wrote to me on 1-22 and 1-23,  I apologize for
no answer.  Again a power failure wiped out everything including
today's Digest.   Please write again.

Also vanished was an article about to be sent regarding the Wurlitzer
165 and my tuning experiences with it.  Here is a replacement story:

The Wurlitzer 165 was located in Seabreeze Park, in Rochester New York.
I had been employed as a pipe organ tuner, and had no experience in
tuning a band organ.  No one else wanted to tackle the old organ, and I
was asked if I would consider tuning it.

Compared to a pipe organ it was *loud*.   I used ear protectors, and
even then, I was able to hear the beats of the notes very clearly.

Perhaps celeste is not the correct term for band organs, but within
this organ were four sets of violin pipes.  Two soft violin, and two
loud violin (both playing two identical notes at the same pitch, in
unison), and other single ranks of pipes, such as the flageolet,
piccolo, tuba, glockenspiel, and bass pipes of the bourdon variety.

I had to devise a method to silence the violin unison pipe, and I used
chicken feathers on the end of sticks, inserted into the unison pipes,
to silence them to tune the first pipe, since both sets of pipes came
on together and there was no way of shutting one set off.  Once the
first row of pipes was in tune, I removed the chicken feather
silencers, and tuned the unison row slightly sharp to give the rank a
slow rolling effect, and a lush sound.  I had no idea if this was right
or wrong, but the effect was very good.

I could see that if they were tuned perfectly in unison there would be
a loud sound, without the pleasant rolling effect.  This might account
for identical organs sounding differently.  It would not be the
voicing, but rather the way in which it was tuned.  There are different
temperaments, such as Meantone, Werkmeister, and Equal Temperament.  I
tuned this organ Equal Temperament, because the glockenspiel was tuned
Equal Temperament.  To tune differently would conflict with the
glockenspiel.

If the second unison set of pipes were tuned perfectly to the first
set, this effect would have been lost.  I did the same for the soft
violin pipes, and the results were very pleasing.

Recordings of the old organ were made both before and after I tuned it.
The difference is evident.

It was some time ago, but I do remember that there were many other
major problems beginning to occur with the Wurlitzer 165, mainly what
we call "whisper ciphers": leaks into the adjacent pipe air supply
would softly sound the adjacent pipe.  To the trained ear it sounded
badly.  Management was not in favor of major work on the instrument at
the time.  The park was just about to open, and they did not want to
have the organ out-of-service.  We had to do the best we could under
those conditions.

Thinking back, it was hot, humid, and very dirty.  It was a day-long
project, but the results were very rewarding for me.

I recall that the bass pipes were located in very strange patterns
under the instrument.  For example C would be right in front of me, and
C# would be way off somewhere else.  It was very difficult to get under
the instrument, and I nearly got stuck on several occasions.  There
were major problems under there too.  One note had a bad leak to
another and when it was called upon to play, a horrible sound would
emit from an adjacent pipe.  Again management was not in a position for
major work, so we stuffed a wadded paper towel into the mouth of the
offending pipe, and let it be.  No one but me seemed to know the
difference.

Sadly, a few years ago, the merry-go-round and organ burned to the
ground in a matter of minutes after a worker tried to melt some tar on
the roof of the building to stop some water leaks.

Fortunately, all was insured, and a new building, replacement organ and
merry-go-round have been set up on the site.

Bruce Clark