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Schedule and Frequency of Tuning
Visits:
The organs in our care vary in size from one rank [61 pipes] to over 100 ranks, and our tuning
agreements vary from one visit per month to one visit per year. In general, tuning sessions before
the Christmas and Easter Festival seasons provide a satisfactory schedule for most churches,
although we can plan these visits to suit particular programming needs.
This semiannual schedule doesn’t strain the church budget, but does help to keep the organ in top
playing condition, the tuning tight, and the temperaments precise. Problems are caught and can be
fixed before they become major issues.
Larger organs and those with many reed stops benefit from tuning visits between those two festival
periods, and these visits may be briefer, limited to touching up stops that are affected by changes
in environmental conditions.
Regular servicing can actually decrease the cost of organ care over the years. The illustrated
pipes in the picture below started to lean then collapsed while organ maintenance was
delayed.
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Once the top of a tall narrow pipe leans past its centre of
gravity, the soft metal will quickly deform and the pipe will
collapse.
[click image to enlarge]
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Temperature and
Tuning:
For a pipe organ to sound its best in climates of extreme seasonal change, a
consistent heating policy is important to allow the organ to be heard at the same temperature
during worship services.
The pitch of an organ pipe varies with temperature, and, as the many pipes of an instrument are of
different sizes and materials, the pitch change is not the same in each pipe. For this reason, the
organ must be tuned with the church temperature stabilized at exactly the temperature set for the
main church service. It will take several hours to reach this stabilized state, as usually pipes
are either enclosed in a paneled case or buried in a chamber without heating units.
It is possible to make the organ sound worse if the tuners have to tune at a temperature several
degrees hotter or colder than the regular church service setting, or if the heat is rising or
falling significantly during the tuning session.
We have designed a reminder notice that can be printed from our website. Tape the card on or near
the thermostat when the heat is turned up for the tuning visit.
Click on the thermostat to open a WORD document with ready-to-print notices.
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click to open the WORD file |
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