What ever happened to seporate reed and flue ventils

[Ben Madison]

It was on some pipe organs that you had the reeds on a ventil and it allowed the organist to prepare and then at the riggt tine engage the reeds by a small lever.

am i making something up or is this a real thing.

[Leisesturm]

Combination Action. It's a (real) thing.

[aeolian pat]

Ventil chests do not have air in them until you engage the ventil lever. You can draw the stops on the ventil chest but they won't sound until the air is let in. What does it sound like? well think of a bag pipe.Several organ builders in the early years built ventil chests. They are not needed anymore nor are they desirable. You would not use the ventil to add stops while you were playing as you might using a preset or crescendo pedal.
Regards
Pat

[samibe]

For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_xrOKMr-7k
Note that when he holds a chord while engaging a ventil the pitch scoops up to where it's supposed to be. Not the most presentable of effects.

[toodles]

As Leisestrum suggested, combination actions have become quite advanced with many pistons and easy programming, making ventils virtually obsolete, since you can program your pistons to do the same thing, but with greater specificity.

[Ben Madison]

Combination Action. It's a (real) thing.

You sound witty with that smart comment.

[Jay999]

Hi Ben....Go to Youtube, and type in...."Concerts at St. Sulpice". There you will find an organ still played via Ventils.

[F Kalbrenner]

As everyone ells here has said ventils are pretty much obsolete but a while ago I came across a video of a demonstration of a concert organ built in the 80's that uses a rather unusual combination action that works by twisting the stop knobs in order to program the presets.

[Ben Madison]

Samibe i think you nailed it. That is a way I could very well be inserting into a design of mine. that was i was looking for, i wonder how that would play out in a large, i mean large theatre type instrument.

[samibe]

I'm sure a theatre organist would figure out a way to have fun with the effect. Although I think it would be difficult to get all of the pipes controlled by a ventil to have a consistent effect while starved of air (some pipes might scoop nicely while other may not even sound until the ventil is fully drawn). I don't think the design of a theatre organ is particularly conducive to this setup. Ventils are typically only used on direct mechanical actions. Theatre organs are usually electro-mechanical, electro-pneumatic, etc. So you would need a way of remotely controlling the ventils (which isn't impossible but it is adding extra failure points to an already complicated system). Theatre organs are usually very unified. So if there were a ventil to run the just the tibias on a TPO, that one ventil would control all of the tibia stops on all divisions and at all pitches because all of the tibia stops would be pulling from the same rank.

[Jay999]

I am a theatre organist. What you are proofing here makes no sense....even on a contemporary church organ, let alone a theatre organ.

[APipeOrganist]

So ventil windchests were invented by our good friend Cavaillé-Coll, and they appear a lot in his organs. What they allowed was for 1) a whole bunch of stops to be on a higher pressure than the rest of the instrument, and 2) on an organ with 100 stops like Saint-Sulpice in the 1860s, you don't have a lot of choice if you want to add many stops very quickly. You could use a mechanical registration pedal, but that gets VERY heavy very quickly (I play on a large 1870s organ that has them), and they don't give you the flexibility that you need. So Ventils are the best option possible with the circumstances.

[VaPipeorgantuner]

It was on some pipe organs that you had the reeds on a ventil and it allowed the organist to prepare and then at the riggt tine engage the reeds by a small lever.

am i making something up or is this a real thing.

Taking a step backwards....a ventil is nothing more than a control that admits (or releases) air into/out of a wind chest (or series of wind chests. On organs built before the modern adjustable combination systems, the ventil control gave the organist the ability to "pre-set" certain voices (usually the reed stops and/or mixtures) to come on when wind was admitted to the chest cavity where the pallets were, thus allowing those pipes on that particular chest to play. St. Sulpice is a special case where there is both the ventils AND a pre-set system for each division using a stop control mechanism. (the operation is complex and not the subject at hand). Cavaille-Coll built the larger divisions in his organs on multi-segmented chests allowing multiple pressures so that the trebles of stops, being on higher pressure, did not lose power in the highest notes. The ventil controls acted on multiple chests to disable/enable the reed stops.

Rick in VA