The old organ

Briefly

The old organ was a “Special Standard” production model built by the Belfast firm of Evans & Barr when the church was completed just before World War II.  It was a very poor design and Evans & Barr eventually went bankrupt – some would say through producing too many similar poor instruments.

• by the 1990’s the electric action was beginning to fail and parts were replaced, but they didn’t match the rest of the organ properly
• by 2003 the organ blower was overheating and dangerous, but its replacement was too small to produce sufficient wind pressure, so parts of the organ would go in and out of tune as it was being played
• by 2009 the console (the ‘desk’ from which the organ is played) was almost worn out and the organ was fast becoming unplayable, so a complete rebuild was required – it had never been properly maintained, and the lack of proper maintenance had contributed to its failings
• some of the pipework was too badly damaged (through incompetent tuning attempts) to be repaired
• a lot of the original 70 year-old wiring was dangerous and covered in cotton insulation
• some of the ducting carrying wind to the pipes was held together with gaffer tape or, sometimes, electric tape and was falling apart
• something had to be done – the organ is used several times a week!

The full story

The organ’s design was based on that of pre-World War II cinema organs – the “unit extension” principle.  Evans & Barr thought that they could make them cheaply and quickly on a production line, but it was such a poor design that it was a commercial failure.

The organ used only 5 sets (‘ranks‘) of pipes and a lot of electronic technology that was old  – even in the late 1930’s.  Each rank provided the sound for several stops at different pitches (instead of using the traditional design where each stop (or tone) had its own rank of pipes, which made different sounds as well as pitches).  Even though each rank was used to supply pipes for stops at several pitches, no pipes were fitted for the higher pitches, so that the top two octaves would use the same pipes!

The unit extension principle meant that when stops were drawn together, melody lines could be heard reasonably clearly (except when the melody needed to use the non-existent top octaves!), but chords sounded ‘thin’ so that the rest of the notes in a chord would not be balanced with the top note.  It also meant that

• the organ could be played loudly or very quietly, but there was no middle range
• that repeated notes would not be heard if played alongside sustained notes as they were all using the same pipes, and
• that the organ was never properly in tune when stops were combined.

The organ used a lot of ‘duplexing‘ – each rank of pipes would be used on all of the keyboards, so there was very little tonal variety between each section of the organ and sometimes, pedal notes could not be heard if the relevant pipes were also being used on one of the manuals.  In addition, in order to get sufficient volume for the Church out of a very small number of pipes, the organ was set to run on 6″ wind pressure (double the normal pressure for an organ of its size).  This caused 2 problems – very poor tone quality, and tuning problems because some of the ducting that took the wind to the pipes had too small a diameter to allow sufficient wind through when full pressure was needed, so whole sections of the organ would suddenly go slightly out of tune.

Although the design was very poor, some of the pipework was of good quality, as was the oak casework.  By the 1990’s there were major problems with the electronic action, a number of pipes were badly damaged through incompetent tuning, and the blower was wearing out.  In addition, the organ had never had a thorough clean and overhaul, which are essential every 15/20 years to keep an organ in full working order.

The 1990’s

The main electronic switching system was wearing out, so this was partially replaced in the early 1990’s with a solid state system.  This operated at one-tenth of the voltage of the existing system, which meant that parts of the organ that were meant to operate on the old voltage were now connected to the new (lower) voltage, and this caused, over time, new problems.  For example, some of the switchgear was designed to be self cleaning by producing a spark when activated, which burnt off dust and dirt.  When the lower voltage was introduced this no longer happened so the contacts were rendered useless.  The blower was then running hot and was likely to seize up, as well as being a fire hazard.  This was replaced in 2003, but the new blower was too small for the amount of wind pressure required, which provided yet another cause for the organ to go in and out of tune through having insufficient wind.