Thirty instruments.
Thirty-seven years.

The key is joined to the valve by a strip of wood.

Every organ that leaves this shop has mechanical action: a tracker runs from the key, through rollers and squares, to the pallet under the pipe. Nothing electric stands between the finger and the wind. The player feels the valve open.

Scale, voicing and stoplist are settled instrument by instrument — “which answer directly to the logistical needs of the institution or the liturgical needs of the congregation,” as the builders put it. So is the case: its height, its finish, its decoration.

Pitch

a′ = 440 Hz — Opus 26

Temperament

Quarter-comma meantone with three subsemitones — Opus 26

Wind pressure

87 mm — Opus 15, University of Tennessee

Casework

White oak · waxed douglas fir · polychrome and water gilt · faux bois

Largest

Opus 24 — three manuals and pedal, 58 stops, Christ Church Cathedral, Cincinnati

D♯ and E♭ are not the same note.

In quarter-comma meantone the thirds are pure and the sharps and flats part company. Opus 26, in the All Saints’ Chapel at Trinity Church, Wall Street, keeps both: three subsemitones — D♯/E♭, G♯/A♭ and A♯/B♭ — each chosen by its own mechanical lever.

Throw a lever

Sharps selected — D♯ · G♯ · A♯

Three levers, three choices. An organist tuned to equal temperament never has to make them; on this instrument the decision is mechanical, and it is made before the first chord.