Our Casavant organ is getting some much needed tuning and care today…
There are at least three types of “pipes” in this organ. The first type are the silver (and the gold/white) coloured pipes you see in the picture – these are “flute” pipes. You can also in these pictures see square wooden pipes – these are associated with the foot pedals on the organ and provide the low bass notes. Finally in the other bank of pipes, the reed pipes are built like a reed instrument (think saxaphone) but instead of a wooden reed it is metal. The reed pipes sound ranges from a bit like a trumpet or french horn to more of a sax sound.
If you are sitting at the keyboard, the gold and white pipes on the right side are real working pipes, the ones in the left bank are decorative.
The keyboard touches and stops are all translated to the pipes via the literally hundreds of tiny grey tubes you see at the back of the keyboard mechanism. A push on a key or push/pull on a stop lever creates pressure in the tube that moves a mechanism in the pipes. There must be thousands of feet of these tubes in our organ. Mechanically it is quite extraordinary and
Our organ is possibly the oldest Casavant in Hamilton.