Specification of Brombaugh organ, Op. 9, for Ashland Avenue Baptist Church Toledo, Ohio

DISPOSITION:


Great - Manual I
Bourdon 16 -
Præstant I-II in discant from fis' 8 -
Holpijp 8 -
Octave 4
Spielflöte 4
Octave 2
Mixture III-X
Trumpet 8 *


Ruckpositive - Manual II
Gedackt 8
Præstant 4 -
Rohrflöte 4 -
Octave 2
Quinte 1 1/3
Sesquialtera II
Musette 8

Pedal
Subbass 16 -
Octave 8 -
Fagot 16
Trumpet 8 *

Couplers, etc
Great - Pedal
Positive - Pedal
Positive - Great

Tremulant

* Great stop playable in Pedal by transmission
- Some pipes common with another stop

Keyboard compasses: Manuals, 56 notes: C - g '''; Pedal, 30 notes: C - f ', AGO concave-radiating style
Mechanical key action, suspended; mechanical stop action; attached keydesk
Metal flue pipes of high lead alloys, hammered and adjusted for vocale sound
Cone tuning for small flue pipes; soldered hats for stopped metal pipes; reeds easily tunable by organist
Solid wood slider windchests and wind system with large wedge bellows; no stabilizers required
Windpressure: 90 mm water column
Originally in Werckmeister III, Builder retuned the organ to Kellner's "Bach" temperament in 1995.
This organ has 19 stops on 29 ranks, with 1261 pipes.
The freestanding casework of solid red oak to match the church's interior woodwork is architecturally based on the Dutch Renaissance organs in Rhenen and Brouwershaven; the organ is placed in the gallery located above the baptistry at the front corner of the nave of the "Akron plan" styled church built in the 1890s.
Of special interest is the Great Mixture that is based on the design concept of the ancient Dutch Blockwerk upperwork. Playing of the Ruckpositive from the upper keyboard follows a precedent found in some historic organs in Province Groningen, the Netherlands.
Dedication on 15 November 1972, played by Susan Craig, organist of the church, with additional dedicatory recitals played in January and May 1973 by Vernon Wolcott, Prof of Organ at BGSU, and David S. Boe, Prof of Organ at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and advisor to the church for this project.
This is the first instrument built following Brombaugh's comprehensive study of many historic European organs in 1971 from support by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

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