UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, July 15, 1992
5
Public organ display
Kansan File Photo
Lawrence company will present how their organs are made and what they're made of
By Richard Mancinelli Special to the Kansan
There are two types of pipes used in pipe organs — reeds and flutes. And from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, an organ with about 2,700 of these pipes will be displayed at an open house at the Reuter Organ Company, 612 New Hampshire St.
Reuter, which will enter its 75th year of operation in March, is one of about a half dozen major pipe organ manufacturers in the United States, said Robert Vaughan, director of production.
The company produces about one organ every two months and has left its name in churches around the United States and Canada.
The three-manual, three-keyboard model that will be on display has pipes ranging in length from a few inches to 16 feet. Though the pipes are the most eye-catching feature of the organs, many craftsmen design, build and tune thousands of other parts that remain unseen.
All work is done in house. Raw materials are bought, and Reuter starts the manufacturing process. When an order comes in, a representative goes to the prospective location to take measurements and recommend a type of organ to fit the customer's budget and building.
"The organ and the room together make up one instrument; we can't make a bad room sound good." Vaughan said. "This idea is what hurts the American organ manufacturers."
Many European churches and cathedrals are made of stone and marble and have high ceilings, whereas their American counterparts are constructed of wood, plastics and insulation materials and have lower ceilings, he said.
An example of the importance of a building's design is an organ Reuter had constructed to be played in a train station at a manufacturers' convention in Texas. It sounded great in the station, but when it was purchased by a church in Iowa and installed, it had to undergo change and could not replicate the sound produced in the larger building.
Once the representative has a sale, the design team takes over the project and begins the engineering. Before an organ can be installed it has to be stamped and approved by an engineer. Though there are no engineers on Reuter's design staff,
When the design is ready for production, the craftsmen get their assignments. The production process can take from 1,300 to 12,000 hours.
Pipes can be wood or metal and can be open or have a stopper at the top. A stopper acts like a piston and is used to tune the pipe and lower the sound by an octave, said Robert Leach, who has built wood pipes for two years. The wooden pipes are used for a deep, full sound. They usually are made of poplar, a soft wood, Metals, usually copper and zinc, are melted, molded into sheets, snapped to size, shaped, welded and tuned into a small musical part of a larger musical whole.
Once all the parts are produced, tuned and arranged according to the design, the organ is tuned. The whole setup must be partially deconstructed and trucked out to be reconstructed and returned in its new home.
"It's a challenge every time I go to do something," Leach said of the production process.
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