musical woes

[kayre]

The organ I play last had major work done on it in the 1990s; some stuff is starting to wear out. My church is feeling nervous about money lately, but there's a substantial capital fund for maintenance, so I recently got $7000 authorized for replacement contacts on the manuals. They've been breaking one by one; this will replace all 120 of them at once, with a 5 year guarantee.

Last week I began to notice a little 'wobble' in the sound of the instrument-- uneven wind pressure. Yesterday during the nonmusical moments of a memorial service I was staring at the organ, and suddenly realized that the wind pressure indicator light was flicking on and off randomly-- off for a second or two, anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds apart. So there's definitely a problem in the air pressure-- leaky wind chest, failing motor, valve stuck open. The organ tech comes tomorrow morning. At this point my instructions are to tell him to go ahead with the keyboard repairs, and I'm able to authorize up to $700 for whatever the new problem is. If it's more expensive than that, which is all too likely, it'll have to go to Session (ruling body of the church) Tuesday night. Whee.

Tiny silver lining is that the tech is going to be impressed that I heard this before failure was obvious. Anything that convinces an organ or piano tuner that the organist or pianist is not a talented idiot is a plus.

Comments

[amaebi]

As you know, my thumbs are clenched hard.

And I'm sorry about the constant denigration / need to credential / having the credentials dissed. :(

[sine_nomine]

Hooray for hearing (and then seeing) what's going on. You will definitely be able to work with the organ tech to figure it out, as you know... but yeah, this could get expensive (OMG $7K to replace the contacts? But a) at least they are replaceable and b) wow that's a lot of contacts! I had no idea... fingers crossed that this is something easy and not Session-worthy.