St. Peter's Chateau d'Oex

Goll & cie 1916

This remarkable survivor was purchased by subscription to help lead the hymn singing of the many British prisoners of the First World War who were able to spend time in this beautiful Swiss village.

The whole of the organ's 10 stops are suspended over the console and tuning requires the dexterity of an acrobat. The organ has not had any changes to its mechanism or pipework, though the Euphonia rank was renamed as Gambe at some stage.

Current work involves rebuilding sections of the wind trunks and reservoir supports that had been devoured by carpenter ants. The zephyr couplers appear to have been replaced in the last 10 years and a few of the windchest membranes (taschenladen) have had new leather valves. However, the leather of the actual membranes has become brittle, some are patched and many don't seat the valves correctly, it was decided to replace all 604 of them with new ones made by Laukhuff.

Many ranks of pipes were not speaking correctly and on closer inspection they showed to have suffered from tuning damage. Many of the Eoline pipes had lost their frein harmonique and had damage to the upper lip. A few flute pipes displayed damage caused by excessive cone tuning. The previous tuner had left a note telling the organist that they were impossible to tune.

All these faults have now been rectified, although a final fine regulation of the Eoline pipes will only be carried out once the new action has been installed as they are particularly sensitive to the flow rate of wind.

The whole organ is on 96 mm of wind pressure. The acoustics are a little dry, but this is mainly caused by the sound absorbing wall-to-wall chancel and aisle carpet, removing this would return the organ to its original more reverberant sound.

Despite there being no ranks above 4', the presence of octave couplers on both manuals as well as the highly developed upper harmonics of the foundation stops combines to provide a most impressive sound.

The following link takes you to the fund raising site hosted by the church with more photos of the organ:

https://stpeters.ch/organ-restoration-fund/

The Swell organ wind chest

This shows the tubes that are closed by the horizontal ventils in the pictures below and the vertically mounted ventils in the process of being fitted.

A close up of the chest

The newly installed vertically mounted ventil puffers

and in the console

The zephyr couplers

Marking the exact position of each tube

The position of each tube over the valve is carefully marked

Locating each valve centrally on the tube

The paper strips are detached from one end and the side bars fold down to allow removal of the old ventils.

Previous attempts

This shows how inaccurately some of the old ventils were positioned. The mark left by the tube is too close to the edge of the valve.

The new ventils

Here the boards are photographed before the new ventils are enclosed out of site for the next 50 years.

The lowest octave of pipes spreads over 4 boards. The board far left is for part of the pedal section.

A blocked pipe

The facade pipes have collected quite a bot of debris over the years

emptied out

They may sound better without the debris and after being washed.

and washed

My assistant Peter making use of the beautiful on site pipe washing facility!

A Goll eccentricity

Almost all the tubes that the ventils close against are exactly the same length - except one!

Facade pipe action

For the bespoke Facade action I went for a fetching blue base with a red suede valve

Making the ventils

A jig is made to make sure the valve is centred in each ventil. Here the spring can be seen before being pushed down with a felt pad.

A century of dust?

The pipe rack of the Open Diapason before cleaning.

Tuning damage

This happens to pipes after several years of cone tuning, if you don't take enough care!

Hidden Art

The Church was originally highly decorated, but now only that hidden inside the organ is visible.

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