Posted here is information regarding the rebuilding and enlargement of the Kilgen-Moller organ of Third Baptist Church, St. Louis, Missouri.

On Tuesday March 2 Linda and Howard from the organ committee and I drove up to Chicago to check on the progress of the organ.  What we learned is the shop is working at full-force to complete the organ.  Dan has recovered well from his stroke, but is still slowed down by his left hand.  At the time of our visit he was done with voicing all but about 4 ranks of pipes.  The relays appeared to be complete, the console was mostly done and the majority of the work was focused on building the electro-pneumatic windchests.

Somehow I managed to forget my camera, so all I have are a few photos from my iPhone, which isn’t a great way to capture images.

Each one of these leather pouches has a felt valve. These are the pouches that move to allow air in and out of the pipes.

The pipe drivers are visible in this photo. Aaron has found a way to mount them so that they are compact, yet still easily accessible.

The colors aren’t exactly perfect in this photo. The Harris drawknob faces are beautiful. The Skinner-style coupler tabs are smaller than most organs today, but it allows us to have more of them without it being crowded or having to go to multiple rows, a personal distaste of mine. The P&S keys are excellent as well, so everything was well worth the wait and expense in this area.

The addition of the new Fellowship area on the first floor of the church required that several walls be removed.  One of those walls contained the large main line connection from the console to the relay.  The line goes to the Great chamber first (currently empty) and then over to the Swell side and to the Antiphonal which both have pipes that were still playing.  Having to remove that wall meant cutting the main line, which means that none of the pipes are in service.  The power to the console came back through the line, so a small power supply had to be purchased and wired into the console, making it not much more than a standalone MIDI console, now.

The CM-100 we were renting from Wicks has been returned, and another loaned from an individual who happened to have an extra.  Sadly, the 12 stops of the CM-100 don’t quite make the sound needed to fill the room.  We have acquired some hardware and are putting together a system capable of running Hauptwerk, which may do a better job during services.  Once the new console is in place, the old one will be retained, and along with the Hauptwerk computer will make a nice practice console.

So when is the new console coming?  The Bogues are reluctant to set a date, given all the unexpected setbacks experienced this past year, however, we are working with them to have things completed in the shop by the middle of June.

Blogger has changed their policies regarding how content is published. They have discontinued FTP publishing to outside domains, meaning www.third-baptist-organ.org is now being hosted on Google’s servers. There may be some downtime during this changeover, so let’s wait and see how it goes!

EDIT: Looks like it worked. The next step is to set up a subdomain on the old host so all the pictures will come back.

At the first of August, there are still windchests under construction and two reed ranks waiting to be voiced. This now puts us at September for the next stage of installation, so a few more weeks with a partial organ.

In the meantime, here’s a 9 and a half minute video about the pipe organ in general, made by Concordia Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This video features a 1958 Schlicker organ (installed at a cost of just $45,000!), so it’s very different in quality. Of it’s 58 ranks, 22 are mixture ranks. There’s also a bit of a Wicks practice organ, made noticeable by the gold tuning slides.

The Trechterregal stop is completed and voiced.This stop is a half-length reed based on a design by C.B. Fisk. It gets it’s name from the funnel shaped resonator, or Trechter in German. This reed will play from the German-influenced Positiv division of the organ.

What does it sound like? Here’s a short sample:

In addition, the bottom octave of the new Great 16′ reed is in and ready to be cleaned and finished:
Reinstallation of the south chamber, the Great, Choir, Positiv, and most of the Pedal is still scheduled to begin in late July or early August. The completion date for the entire project, however, still seems to be up in the air.

The new console is stained and reassembled, and ready to be picked up and completed.