A 40-ton organ sits under City Hall. San Francisco is trying to give it away | Hacker News Reader

A 40-ton organ sits under City Hall. San Francisco is trying to give it away

sfchronicle.com

16 pointsgardenfelder9 comments

From what I understand, there are at least two major types of pipe organ: the theater organ and the church organ. The difference mainly lies in the types of stops and sounds that can be elicited, and of course, if this organ is suitable for the theater, then it may not be of much use to a church. Not even a church with several million bucks in their Music Ministry fund.

My church featured a very small vintage pipe organ for several years, but its position in the choir loft and complete lack of climate control made it a great burden of maintenance. Eventually the pastor relented, and purchased an electronic MIDI-based organ, which sonically could run rings around the old mechanical one.

Building on that, there are pipe organs which are purely mechanical: cables or solid connections connect the keyboard to valves on pipes. There are newer ones which use electronic contacts on key to signal electric-powered valves. I once owned a small organ like that.

Some of the organs for sale online have rather short pipes - you don't get the full power of pipes 20 or more feet long.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36423047 ("Free Organ (organclearinghouse.com)"; 92 comments)

(not the same one)

edit: or maybe the same one, ignore me

To me, it appears to be the very same organ!

https://www.organclearinghouse.com/organs-for-sale

turns out to be a goldmine for Organ enthusiasts!

Along with a bit of heartbreak for people who like traditional church music. There's one organ for sale from a church I recognize from my childhood, and I seriously doubt it's because the congregation has voted to get something bigger and better, but has instead switched over to what my aunt derisively calls "7-11" music - the same seven words, sung eleven times, to bland swelling pop music, a.k.a., "praise choruses," and sees no need to keep an organ around.

>Custom built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the organ weighs 40 tons and needs 800 square feet to operate — with a 50-foot ceiling. When the World’s Fair opened, it was the seventh-largest musical instrument on the planet.

7th largest?

Apparently at the time, the largest was the organ from the 1904 world's fair in St. louis

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanamaker_Organ

*Under a building near city hall, for those of us trying to think of where in Elections this thing could possibly be, heh.

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