Oops, in the previous blog, I forgot to insert the name of that fish Waldo catches. It’s called a Pacu.
That morning, we actually started to get pipes in the organ. That’s right. Oh, and David mentioned that he actually had 6 or 7 conductors yet to go and several of them were so damaged, they were simply irreparable.
The padre was making sure all was spiffy for the concert, so a team of weed-whackers was buzzing on one side of the church, while an army of cleaning ladies were mopping the floor (kept it nice and cool) and suddenly a bulldozer turned up in front of the church to spread a big load of dirt and sand around, to cover all the garbage that lays on every inch of ground in Plan 3000. And that was the chaotic, noisy background against which I needed to tune the organ!!!!
Swell 8’ Flute sounded nice and tuned up well.
Swell Viole 8’ was a “HUNH?????” all the pipes were way too sharp, and had to be tuned with duct tape! Needless to say, duct tape is not on the professional organ builder’s list of proper materials and I have a feeling that any application I make to a professional society from now on will be rejected solely on the grounds of this project. The alternative is to solder things up—-well, that wasn’t gonna happen on the day of the concert.
Swell Harmonic Flute 4”. Same “HUNH????” everything much too sharp. crap. more duct tape, even though I recalibrate my tuner to a = 444. Yes, I was using a tuner app on my iPhone, another reason I will never make it to the Hall of Fame. It’s a great app and makes for fast work! Just not sublimely accurate tuning.
Swell Oboe, which David had gone over in the morning and was thrown up into the organ just after lunch—-total scratch. Not a single pipe would tune to any note at all, and David knows his Oboes! It’s just that the whole rank had been so poorly treated over its lifetime, its resonators were torn every which way, and given that our pitch was so mismatched with the pipework, we were in Oboe-Hell.
Great 4’ Octave went in and ate up another bunch of duct tape (sounds really nice, tho).
Great Stopped Bass/Melodia sounded good, though a little weak for my taste.
Great 2’, which Ken racked that morning, as it substitutes for a Dulciana, tuned up nicely, too, no duct tape! It’s a new stop, and the fact that it tuned just fine with its old tuning slides made it clear that this organ simply had been tuned to a much higher pitch than we are used to today.
Great Open Diapason. The interior pipes were a frenzy of duct-tape expertise, and the exterior pipes are the nice painted ones you’ve seen in the photo of Francisco No. 2 Ichu No. 2. But many of their wind-conductors were unrepaired or missing, so the stop couldn’t be used. And we had no time to tune them at all. And it is now 6:30 in the evening, and the concert will begin in an hour. We packed up our stuff, shoved everything into the sacristy, and headed for home to change.
La Organera In Bolivia 