I once had a large Estey reed organ, and was preparing it for a recital
and recording session.  During the practice session, I noticed that the
G pedal reed suddenly started to go extremely flat, and kept getting
worse, until it dropped to a sharp F-sharp.  This was terrible to the
ear of a tuner -- I was panic stricken.  I removed the reed and
examined it, and sure enough, it was cracked from old age, and the
probable crystallizing of old brass.

I searched in desperation to find something to fix it, and found that
the thickness of the reed was the same as that of an aluminum step
ladder I had.  I quickly sawed off a small portion of aluminum from the
ladder and, after removing the rivets from the original reed, I filed
the piece of aluminum to the size of the original reed, drilled two
holes in it, and riveted it back in place.

On the first test, I heard a very loud squawk which resembled a Hallo-
ween horn; however, after doing more filing and using a small hand held
grinder, I was able to get the emergency reed back in tune, and
miraculously it blended in and sounded no different than that of the
neighboring reeds.  It lasted for years, and as far as I know it is
still sounding nicely!

The same organ presented a few other pedal reed problems and, not
wanting to shorten my aluminum step ladder any more than I had already,
I found a brass door plate which was the same thickness of the bass
reeds which eventually died of old age and required replacement.  I was
able to cut and fashion suitable replacements after much time and
patience.

At first, one will find the replacement reeds to be too loud, but
slightly filing the edges will tame down a loud reed.  It also will
make the reed go flat, but that can be adjusted.  This is not an easy
job!

Bruce Clark