Karl A. Petersen  (kap@DRAGON.MICRON.NET)
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In the early '60s, I worked on pipe organs in the Troy, New York
(NY) area, built a harpsichord, kept a player piano going, and
generally enjoyed being a self-taught tyro in an environment the
industrial revolution created and then passed by.
 
Starting college, I bought a bunch of parts from Wallace
Zuckermann to build a 4'& 8' 5-octave harpsichord, since lots of
people wanted them, they were very expensive, and I knew it
would be rather easy to build. Three months of evening work
completed the instrument, it was played in concert and for fun,
and never got sold, although it has been on loan since 1972 in
Mission Viejo, California.
 
The Troy Music Hall has since been recognized and conserved
along with its immense tracker organ, but in those days it
hadn't been tuned in decades and its major "feature" was how the
whole keybed sagged when large coupled chords were played.  I
seem to recall that this opened all the notes.  Horrible.  At
least the water motors had been replaced by blowers.
 
The Green Island Methodist Church of about 12 ranks had crumbly
leather nuts, so I spent one month reworking everything outside
the chests and splicing on a Maas carillon switchbank over the
upper manual and made a disused stop actuate the switch.
 
In Troy, St. Paul's Episcopal had an 8 rank organ on the second
floor of the church hall.  The pedal board had been lifted up
and wrenched off in the '20s, but I and a friend, David Camp
(now of Rochester) put it back together.  He played The Jig and
I pumped.  The hand pump was quite intact, but the water motor
had been removed from the basement.  All the gas lights worked
quite as well as the electrics.  We returned one fall to find
that the now-useful instrument had been sold off, and we had not
even been given first refusals.
 
The AME Zion Church had about a 9 rank organ of similar design
by Hinners & Albers(?) but with wildly painted display pipes.
When the urban renewal slated the church for destruction, I felt
like a thief paying vestryman J. Nurney Harrell $50 and
committed to remove the organ over a 3 month period.  I was
greatly relieved when the elderly grandson of the builder
Hinners tracked me down and paid $200.  to take the organ
himself.  It went to his son's house in Maryland where the house
was built "around" the organ.
 
Since the mid-60s, I have restricted my keyboard interests to
reproducing pianos but am still a pipe organ voyeur and will
watch this list for a few months from relative seclusion in
Boise, Idaho.