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
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