Cipher on two manual and pedal reed organ (Holt)

[keith565]

Can anyone help? I have a cipher on the swell of my two manual and pedal Holt Reed Organ. I have partially dismantled the organ to see if I could see what the problem is and there is a rod which is not springing back up to the same position as the others in the top of the swell action. I have uploaded pictures. I can't see how to gain access to this part to investigate the problem further. Any helpful advice would be very much appreciated.

Thank you,

Keith

[SubBase]

I think you need to gain access to the windchest and pallet valves therein. Most likely is a set of a dozen or more screws around the perimeter that secure the top of the swell chest into the equalizer bellows. Then you will be able to determine why the pallet valve isn't returning. If the small dowel/pitman is simply stuck with a bit of debris, this may be remediable from above, if you have a strong vacuum that can suck out the bit of trash from the pitman's trace.

[Organfella]

Hello Keith. Just curious - the picture showing part of the bellows suggests that this is a pressure organ. Those are nice and they tend to be capable of a slightly higher volume. Could you post some more pictures? Thanks.
Hope you get the ciphering cleared up. It may produce a bit of work to get fixed but would really be worth the effort. Luck!
.
Nico

[SubBase]

The equalizer is extended at rest, which indicates suction. Pressure equalizers are closed at rest.
Casey

[Organfella]

Interesting. Thanks Casey. And to my limited experience also an interesting design., I hope to hear some sounds soon.

Nico

[keith565]

Thank you for your reply (@SubBase). I had to remove the sound board from the bellows to gain access to the pallet valves (the offending one had slipped to one side and needed an adjustment of the pallet spring).

[keith565]

Dear Nico,
It is an English reed organ which uses suction.

[myorgan]

Keith,

That is, indeed, quite unusual! European organs generally use pressure, while American organs generally use suction. I guess there are always exceptions to both rules. Thank you for sharing that information.

Michael

[Organfella]

Beautiful organ Keith. Thank you for the picture. Indeed rather unusual as Michael says but then, everything made by man is subject to a variety of deviations to the norm. I bet that one has a beautiful sound. Certainly worth getting to sing properly. How is it powered. With a blower or lever?

Good luck.

Nico

[keith565]

The organ has an emergency foot pump pedal next to the swell pedal and also a hand pump handle at the side. However, this organ is powered with an electric blower.

[John Edelmann]

On my Adler, i had a non playing reed .. so i removed it (having remedied about 6 others up to this point successfully!). When I removed it, it had a 5/8" inch long splinter stuck in the reed (!) What I didn't notice, however, is that during the course of removing the reed that was not playing, I managed to introduce a cipher. it's C2 as it were, and now, the note on the other side of the reed box is ciphering whereas before it surely wasn't. I've tried vacuuming but to no avail. I also notice that the key is (apparently) now riding about 1/8" lower than the rest of the adjacent white keys. The idea of accessing the vertical "pitman" somehow seems very daunting...if that's what has somehow slipped ...

[SubBase]

From your description of the symptoms, you have a crumb of debris trapped between the pallet valve and the board, holding the pallet open. I have cleared these w/o disassembling the whole shebang by tipping the instrument back on its heels so to speak, getting the wind up to maximum, and tapping the key hard several times. The tipping allows gravity to assist the strong wind in blowing the debris off the pallet. Maybe a 25% chance of success, but it's worth a shot.

[Organfella]

John, that sinking key would indicate a pitman to be the culprit, or anything associated with it. Your experience proves again something I have come to realize: When one scratches around the insides of such an old one, invariably the scratching introduces additional ailments and faults. Fun it is as one learns a lot by fiddling in there. The massive splinter you found is interesting as one naturally would get to wonder where it comes from....

Good luck with your venture.

Nico

[John Edelmann]

SubBase - thanks! that's what i'm hoping for. Failing this, I'll probably need concise info as to how best to execute a pitman correction operation. i've looked around, and it doesn't appear that there is any easy way to remove the entire top action from the top of the unit ... I understand the that large wood platform is the top of the lower action; but i'm not seeing screws that would hold the top action to the bottom in such a way as to keep the various control rods etc., in tact.

I can of course pull the reeds temporarily like a pipe organ tuner would pull a pipe, but... this is "C" which is unfortunate.

[John Edelmann]

Here's the splinter ! Obviously the vacuum induced during play did this i'm guessing!

[John Edelmann]

So .. update .. after placing organ on its back, i am able to better see the pitman that is about 1/4" too low relative to all of the others. So if I tried playing and tapping the offending key as suggested; no luck; then I used pliers to reposition it higher... that works... cipher goes away. But if i play the note again, it's back. So guessing it's an actual valve issue probably?

[SubBase]

Take off the stopboard and the keyboard, then pull the sticky pitman, use an attachment to vacuum the hole the pitman enters, then lightly sand the pitman with very fine sandpaper (220) before applying powdered graphite to it and reinstalling it. May as well sand and graphite all 61 while you're at it.

[John Edelmann]

So ..i'm guessing that replacing the keyboard on top of all the rods (pitmen?) is nontrivial? or do they pretty much stay vertically aligned to things when you replace the keyboard? I may e over thinking this ...

[SubBase]

There is a guide that holds the pitmans vertical regardless of the presence of the keys.