We began work on the overhauled instrument for St. Joseph Catholic Church in Salisbury, Missouri with a windchest from a 1940s installation removed from St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Meta, Missouri in 1999 and used in a local high school. In 2015 Fr. Jeremy Secrist took possession of the instrument. He had kept the instrument in storage for a number of years before making it available to be refurbished for this new installation. We also took posession of several ranks of secondhand pipework for consideration in this job. Christopher Soer, Joseph Eckelkamp, and Fr. Secrist met to talk tonal schemes and come up with a draft specification of the new instrument – more to come soon!
The original mecahnics (above) are in pretty good condition, though the original cotton-covered wiring would need to be replaced, as well as new returns wired to comply with electrical code limits. The plan is also to wire these with new cable and utilize solid-state relay and console control components to maximize the flexibility of the instrument.
We completed the wiring of the chest mechanics the week of May 3rd and the next step is procuring the relay components. Work has also begun with winding system components and procuring the proper blower, reservoir, and wind trunk material. We have stated the intention to add two more ranks to the instrument specification and look forward to working on those chests soon.
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