I shall weigh in on the blower wind line controversy.

I have installed numerous pipe organs, etc. (Lots of "etc."!)  Yes,
the shorter the blower line the better.  However, you can make the
wind line as long as you want and still have the pipes playing just
fine, with some things to be noted below.

Pipe organs and player pianos use opposite ends of the air pressure
spectrum.  Wind, both positive and negative, has pressure or water lift
and also volume or cubic feet per minute.  The player piano uses high
pressure low volume: 6 to 60 inches water lift.  The pipe organ uses
lower pressure (1.5 to 10 inches water lift) and higher cubic feet per
minute (CFM).  (A few large organs or loud trumpets use 20" to 50"
pressure.)

A pipe organ must have sufficient pressure AND sufficient flow, CFM.
If you get the right pressure to the pipes then one or two pipes will
play just fine, but without sufficient CFM you will get a pitch sag or
reservoir shake from normal chords being played.  Keep reading for the
solutions to this.

Never use flexible wind line longer than 1 foot unless absolutely
necessary.  I only use it to get around weird turns.  The ridges inside
the flex causes the air to make a little tornado at each ridge.  With
thousands of tornadoes, very little air gets where it needs to get --
too much turbulence.

Use solid wind line.  The old guys soldered up seams in HVAC duct metal.
The older guys made their own solid wind line of zinc or wood.  You may
use thin wall PVC.  The thick wall PVC is _sooo_ heavy that it is
cumbersome to work with, and it also tends to droop from its weight,
but it can be used.

When running a longer than optimum wind line, enlarge the size of the
line.  If you are running a normally 4" line, but wish to make a longer
run, then make it a 6" line.

Make use of static wind regulators.  Add a reservoir (with a curtain-
or ball-regulator valve) at the pipe [chest] end of the wind line run.
A static reservoir is the reservoir closest to the blower that feeds
all the other reservoirs.

Never use flex line on a tremolo.  If the organ has winkers, put
cutouts on them to shut off the concussion bellows (winkers) when the
trem turns on.

Use a large wind line on trems to get full effect.  On a Tibia use at
least 6", others usually 4".

The old Wurlitzer guys used a formula for tremolos that I seem to
remember to be a wind line of 12 feet with three 90-degree turns.  They
had it figured out how many feet of straight line equals one 90 turn.
I would need to check my files for exact amounts.  Perhaps someone else
on this list can refresh my memory.

Tremolos are best winded from the pipe chest and not the reservoir,
even though the old guys often winded them from the reservoir.

The Wurlitzer tremolo is best achieved using a reservoir/regulator with
two pallet valves and one ball valve.  The ball opens first then the
small pallet and then the large pallet.

So if your little organ has a two-inch wind line from the blower and
you put the blower 50 feet away, then run perhaps a 4" line to that 2"
hole on the pipe chest.  If you get pitch bounce with playing add a
small reservoir.

By the way, pipes are voiced to only one pressure.  You must decrease
or increase spring force or weights on the reservoir to change
pressure.  Listen to the pipes at several pressures to determine the
correct pressure.  They will tell you what pressure they want to play
on.  Correct pressure will have the greatest number of them speaking
immediately to their pitch and not overblowing to another pitch.

If you wish to change pressures for larger or smaller rooms, then by
all means find a pipe voicer to do it.  Voicing is not a job for the
novice.  There is too much you can screw up learning to voice on pipes
from an historic instrument.

Hope this helps.

D. L. Bullock    Piano World    St. Louis