St. Ann's Episcopal Church, Bridgehampton, New York

Opus 644, 2005 | Page 1 | Specification | (click on any picture at right to enlarge)

The challenge of course, was to now somehow fit 17 ranks in a space that before barely contained 8. Early in the design process it became evident that much of the precious real estate in the organ chamber could be reclaimed if the many offset chests for various ranks could be consolidated onto a new single offset chest which would also provide for the new Trumpet 16'. Consideration for the mitered knuckles of the new full-length 16' reed bore special attention. We also wanted to insure the new chamber layout would permit adequate access for service, and most importantly, tuning. Rebuilding the existing expression shades and fitting them with new expression controllers made available space that had been previously occupied by a pneumatic motor with an unwieldy linkage system.

We developed a new 7'- 4" diatonic chest scale to accommodate the new stops and the relocated Gemshorn. The existing Principal 8 was carefully revoiced to give it more moderate power, and the new principal ranks were scaled and voiced to build from this new foundation. The new Great Bourdon 8' was voiced using s special arch cutup schedule which lent the pipes a color that allow the stop to work superbly as both a solo and ensemble voice. The Swell was given its own new 3 rank mixture based on 2' pitch, and the existing Zimbel Mixture was recomposed into a more appropriate chorus Mixture based on 1 1/3' pitch for the Great.

Though the action for the new chestwork was specified to be electro-mechanical, we milled all toeboards to be no less than 1.5" in thickness. This, along with proper attention to voicing, successfully offset any pipe speech problems normally anticipated with this type of action. Our windchests were made from solid poplar, with the exception of the toeboard for the new Swell Mixture, which was milled from sugarpine.

The new console and case, both entirely of our own design and manufacture, were milled from solid quarter-sawn white oak, and stained and finished to match existing fixtures in the sanctuary. The console interior (stop jambs and key cheeks) were milled from solid walnut and finished with hand-rubbed Danish oil. The facade pipes are polished tin, made to custom specifications we developed and submitted to our friends at Gieseke. The new flue pipes were built to our scales by Luc Ladurantaye Tuyatier of Lac Saguay, Quebec.

Along with the standard complement of accessories, the console features an integrated control system with multiple memory levels, programmable crescendo and sforzando, 12 step transposer and MIDI interface for record and playback ability. The digital Antiphonal division was contracted and installed separately by Artisan Instruments.