In late May the team from MC Thompson arrived on site to install the Choir organ (the section of the organ that is played from the third and lowest of the organ’s three keyboards). This was due to be done in 2017, but Mike Thompson was taken ill and the work had to be postponed until he was fully recovered and his team had completed other projects which were ahead of us in the ‘queue’.

We also asked Mike and software house, Sonic Services, to upgrade our registration software and install a ‘stepper’. This has increased the divisional memory (the system which memorises pre-set stop selections for each division of the organ, so that stops can be changed on each division at the touch of a button) from 30 to 99 channels. Each division has six buttons, so each division can have up to 594 stop selections programmed into the memory. The general memory (which memorises stop selections for the whole organ) has been given 199 channels. There are eight general buttons, so we can now programme up to 1,592 stop selections into the memory.

The ‘stepper’ is a very useful gizmo – it enables the player to be able to scroll forward and back through the general stop selection. The ‘forward’ button for this is operated by a toe piston to the right of the swell pedal, and the ‘back button’ has a toe piston to the left of the swell pedal.  These are duplicated by forward and back buttons on the right hand side of the keyboards which can be operated by an assistant if a piece of music is too complex for the player to operate the stepper.