Anonymous Reed Organ Repair

For more about reed organs, visit my Estey portable post.

I picked this reed organ up in Fall 2021 from a guy on Lake Willoughby in Vermont, hoping to learn on it as a fixer-upper. I pretty quickly realized it was very strange in several ways.

Although I couldn't find a maker's mark or any information anywhere, I figured the organ was at least 120 years old. The fasteners, the style of jointery, the prevalence of hot glue, etc., combined with the fact that most of the reed organs I see around are pre-1900, made me think so.

The thing was in pretty bad shape. Cracked panels, broken joints, a lot of torn-out screw holes, and basically no sound at all.

 

 

The case didn't seem to match the instrument, oddly enough. The thin rails on either side of the above picture, which held the instrument inside, were obviously of a different vintage from either...

Also strange was the swell shutter mechanism, which was given no allowance for a knee lever by the case, meaning the shutter always remained closed. I ended up placing a hinged block adjacent to the shutter so that you could choose to leave it fully opened or closed when playing. Once the top of the action was fully exposed, I could tell that countless, mostly failed, repairs had been worked upon this organ: a huge variety of screws and gory former screw holes dotted its entirety. Also bizarre was the covering of the entire top with black spray paint, obscuring the tag that I assume had maker's info on it.

 

 

The gasket, which should be felt, paper, or, ideally, leather, had been replaced by some randomly-sized strips of flannel. The heart was in the right place here, but this definitely made any leaks a lot worse. Cool springs down below, too.

 

 

Parts organized into lower action, upper action, keybed, rail, cheeks and fasteners.

 

 

I didn't get around to fixing the little organ until Summer of 2022. Finding the right rubber cloth and leather was not easy. Unfortunately, I also lost the finished-product pictures for this organ, although the Estey folder that I worked on was basically done concurrently, and so the major operations look the same.

Basically, the repairs were as follows:

-Filling and/or regluing cracks and busted joints on the case

-Filling old, leaky screw holes around the reservoir

-Filling a leaky crack on the upper action

-Making up a new leather gasket

-Recovering the exhausters and reservois

-Making and applying new leather valves

-Placing new screw holes and refitting the action parts

-Roughly levelling the keys

-Tweaking and tuning the reeds to achieve playability

-Cleaning and reassambling

-Adding a hinged block to enable shutter to open

The organ, while it ended up being playable, was not a great success, mainly because I'm not very skilled at working on reeds yet. The bellows ended up working great, and while there was still more leakage than I would like, the playability was more than adequate.

The greater problem was in the reeds: many were making contact with their frames, leading me to painstakingly file at the slots until they could move freely. Often they were detuned by this and had to be brought back in line. Many were warped or had mouse urine damage. The real problem was in sensitivity- I managed to get the instrument in tune to itself to my liking, but the lowest bass reeds would essentially never play under too much air pressure, and sometimes had to be coaxed into speaking, meaning too-rapid bass work was impossible. A couple of reeds remained troublesome, and would ocassionally silence for no clear reason. The combined problems made the instrument frustrating to play. It was still fun, and the tone, it must be said, was very interesting and rich.

It was also fun to play a bit on a tiny organ of the time (whatever long-ago time that was.) The F to F range is a bit oldschool, and the shortened and roughly-shaped accidentals were fun to negotiate with. The sheer volume of repairs and other evidence of other peoples' tinkering is always pretty fascinating, as well. Hopefully the level I was able to get it to will keep it in circulation as an instrument for a while yet.

I'm glad I ended up picking up a newer Estey while I worked on this project. It was much more playable in the end, tuned to 440hz since it was a 50's instrument, and, since I had the opportunity of practicing on this one, I got to apply a bit of experience. The mystery organ ended up staying behind in the cabin when I moved out...