Reed Organs again

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Hi Dennis
	Regarding the one stop in particular that is out of tune with the rest of
the organ.  Possibly this is intentional especially if you check the
linkage to this stop (set of reeds) and it comes from a knob called "Vox
Humana, Celeste (or Vox Celeste  or spelling variants) or Vox Angelica.
The out of tune set when played with an intune set produces beats. This
gives the illusion of tremelo or vibrato.  This set or rank should be
uniformly off tune.
Reeds should not appear bent unless all of the rank are bent the same way.
 However I have not heard of this.
Tuning reeds is done by inserting very thin piece of shim metal between
the reed and plate.  perhaps someone tried to tune without this piece in
place and in the process bent the reeds.
I have have not had to tune reeds as when the reeds are thoroughly cleaned
first with a soft bristle artists brush to clean off the dust and debris,
the tuning is close enough.  Reeds can be boiled in water with a little
vinegar added, to clean them, but get a second opinion on this.  Anyone
with experience on this boiling method?
	I am glad to see a source of reeds mentioned to this list.  The last reed
organ I bought at a farm sale for $15. It had sat in a chicken house for
20 years.   I traded it.  If reeds have value, then I could contact
auctioneers in this area and put in an absentee bid for reed organs.

Richard Moody   ptt    (South Central South Dakota) (Brule Co.)

----------
> From: Dennis Johnson <johnsond@stolaf.edu>
> To: pianotech@byu.edu
> Subject: Reed Organs again
> Date: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 5:04 PM
>
>
> Sorry, but I want to know if someone can direct me regarding replacement

> and tuning of a few reeds to my big old organ. It is an 1895 double
> manual Story & Clark with pedal board and has four ranks of reeds. I
have
> already removed and cleaned all of these reeds, but 2 or 3 are broken
> (not bad, actually) and one stop in particular is out of tune with the
> rest of the organ. Cleaning did help considerably and 17 of
> the remaining stops sound quite good together. Does someone here know
> what it would take to get other couple of stops in tune, and to replace
> those few bad reeds? It seems that one should be able to replace reeds,
> but they are fastened with what looks like rivets.
>
> I think that someone intentionally bent reeds in the past, and this must

> have been a tuning technique, but specifically, how?
>
>
>  Thanks for any help,
> you may want to respond privately.
>
>
> Dennis Johnson