Aeolian Duo Art Player Pipe Organ, made by the Aeolian Company, New York ca. 1920s.

[paulj0557]

[note to moderators- I know this is a Craigslist for sale item,but am posting it more for the historical meaning]
-Currently FS on CList- http://cincinnati.craigslist.org/msg/2747307665.html

Any idea what this organ sounds like? Is it a good one? It looks amazing!! Any tremulent?

Here is a nice organ that apparently came with the house someone purchased, or is possibly selling from a deceased relatives estate. I'm sure many of us are in the same boat- nobody in the family to pass the torch to. So I wrote the seller a letter telling them that if they have the opportunity to keep the organ for themselves they just might discover they would like it's sound once it was tuned up and the console was checked over. Told them that organ music is an acquired taste and maybe giving themselves a little time to investigate, listen, and learn might change their minds. It's something that their friends an neighbors would love to listen to...well their friends anyway.
It would be nice to see the organ win out, but if their hearts are set on a big ugly sectional sofa,a 60" TV, a treadmill, a litter box, a washer/dry combo, and tan carpet like everyone else...then it certainly wouldn't be out of the ordinary...most people are set on being normal, I mean boring.

Here's some images of this organ & the text from the ad. I'm not affiliated, but I will say this- if they really want it gone you might get it for a song!
Oh', I asked them if they could video it and post it to youtube. I'd really like to hear all of those rolls, let alone one or two.

Aeolian Duo Art Player Pipe Organ, made by the Aeolian Company, New York ca. 1920s.
Walnut Console 61" wide. Side panel 54" high X 31" deep.
Comes with original Aeolian Duo Art Organ Player Rolls.
Has 18" tracker bar. Aeolian Player Rolls measure 15".
Organ pipes of all sizes.
Unrestored conditon. RARE.
Needs to be disassembled and removed from original residence by new owner.

Asking price: $15,000,
Call: 740 975-8588 for more information.

[randy35630]

player organ

Looks like they have had it professionally appraised. That is a large price for a Craigslist item. Aeolian player organs are appreciated - they were house "muzak" for the well-to-do before radio and home stereo systems supplanted them.

They don't sound like church or theatre organs, but would come closer to a churchly sound. I'm sure there are tremulants.

It probably needs to be completely restored and the cost of such would be quite expensive. This one, being in original untampered with condition deserves to be saved. I hope someone is successful. More likely it will be rebuilt or parted out.

[paulj0557]

Thanks for the input. My feeling is if they are wealthy enough to purchase the property they should be smart enough to keep the organ in place, but as I've discovered, many people with lots of money are tasteless, and look out for number one more than the future well being of something as nice as this organ. We in America have far less dignity concerning these matters than say, someone in England. It's sad, but true.

[Westminster]

I rebuilt one of these many years ago, several ranks larger than this one. Tonally they were rather mainstream "symphonic", typical of the period. Pipework was well made and well voiced, but apparently with no on site tonal finishing whatever. I would guess that that would probably not be an issue given the size and layout of this particular instrument. The windchests work exceptionally well, much better than bigger names of the period. Something of a challenge to releather, however.

The player mechanism is somewhat problematic. The 176(?) note tracker bar is made in five sections. The mechanism does a very good job of adjusting itself to the 15 1/4 inch (give or take according to the humidity) width of the rolls. There are two major problems with the design, however. The rather wide rolls have a way of snaking, and the mechanism as built has no way of reading where the roll is relative to the tracker bar. In our rebuild we installed a sensor to read the position of the roll's edge, and motorized the adjustment screw to compensate accordingly. Almost all of the rolls in that situation had torn edges from having been ripped by the roll width sensor ears. In the case of the DuoArt mechanism, the two holes farthest right are rewind and full organ. Consequently if the right edge of the roll isn't in pristine condition the roll will rewind and/or the full organ (reversible) will become out of sync. We restored a few rolls so that they would play properly. The second problem was that the roll drive motor would not maintain a constant speed for more than a few minutes without speeding up or slowing down, sometimes by a considerable amount. Personally, I wouldn't try to rebuild one of these again without replacing the vacuum motor drive with a different arrangement. This would probably utilize a DC motor as the speed has to be adjustable. (Different rolls utilize different basic feed rates)

Another interesting feature of the Aeolians is that all of the switching and the stop tablets operate on vacuum rather than pressure.

[myorgan]

Another interesting feature of the Aeolians is that all of the switching and the stop tablets operate on vacuum rather than pressure.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm not sure which came first with Aeolian--the pipe organ or pump organ. The vacuum feature (as well as the means for reading the roll) MAY have come from their push-up player pump organs made in the early 1900s which worked on a suction mechanism.

I have a push-up player Angelus (Aeolian?) organ that was practically given to me in the 1980s for snowblowing a lady's yard. I had to talk her into taking money for it. At the time, she played it for me (it has an internal set of reeds), but it sits in our entry hallway and I haven't heard it since. I'm hoping to restore it when I have time (aka less work). I have several rolls for that organ, and have made the same observations as Westminster, but again, I haven't had the time to restore or check.

Michael

[Nullifier]

Callanwolde mansion....Atlanta

I played the organ at the masion one day at least as far back as the 80's. It had a player unit but it had been removed for repair. The console looked similar to the one in the Craigslist add but was larger in physical size and had more stops. I remember one of the people there the day I was there called it a resident organ

A gentleman there told me that the mansion had been empty for a couple of years and someone had taken some of the pipes out of the organ and threw them in the back yard back in the hippy days.

He also told me that there was a series of ducts that ran from the organ chamber throughtout the mansion and that's how one controled the music in the house to each room, by using a register or damper in each duct pipe run.

Almost all the voices were working when I stopped by and if I remember correctly that particular organ had around 60 ranks but he told me that a Aeolinan resident organ built in that time period was around 20 ranks and if one wanted 60 ranks you basicly had 3-20 ranks organs in the house-about 36-3700 hundred pipes I didn't think to ask if it was unified.

The organ was in tune, mellow sounding and didn't have one offensive stop on the rail. That's all I remember.

[paulj0557]

The owner's selling agent told me that the owners decided to keep the organ and believes they were partly influenced by my letter to them. I'm sure they'd be glad to hear from anyone who could help them with any information about it.

[randy35630]

That's wonderful news. It needs to stay at home. I believe it should be faithfully restored to original condition. If there is any way to add a midi player without messing up the original that would be an answer to everyday use by the owners. There are builders out there who specialize in this sort of thing. What part of the country are we talking? City/State? I may can give some names for advisors in that neck of the woods.

Randy Terry
Florence, AL