A newly-installed Aeolian-Skinner (opus #1325) in our home church plus an article in "Popular Science" on a Dutch pipe organ with 31 notes per octave plus many interesting stories from my grandfather, a self-taught organist, all conspired to interest me in pipe organs. During junior and senior high school in the early 1960s, I assembled a 2m instrument, tracker action for the Great and home-built electro-pneumatic action for the 1-rank Positiv. That "opus #1" found a new home with another enthusiast after I moved away to college.

At the University of Illinois, I studied Electrical Engineering (but finally got a degree in Sociology) and began working as a systems programmer (IBM 7094 and 360/75). I also met fellow EE student Dave Junchen and we spent a year or more of Saturday mornings restoring a 2/8 Wurlitzer (today still in its original home, Champaign's Virginia Theatre). I later worked with him on an Aeolian-Skinner installation in Chicago (yes, he did A-S installations!).

Now, many years later, I'm still a systems programmer (at Cornell University) but have also been doing work as "Etna Instruments" designing and building various constrol system components for pipe organs, including the MIDI add-ons for the Z-tronics relay system. It's been fun (and challenging) doing both hardware and software design.

I've been collection pieces and parts for "opus #2" for the past 20 years and have gotten to the point where we now have a nice new (and small) organ chamber under the dining room and a 3m console sitting there. A workshop is almost complete out in the barn, heatable so that New York State winters will no longer be a hinderance to organ work. The instrument will be "orchestral" in nature, probably not a true theatre organ, and will comprise from 6 to ??? ranks, depending upon how much will actually fit. It will be unified (with a Z-tronics relay) and will have a MIDI record/playback feature, necessary since I'm hardly an organist. At present, the grandkids and other young relatives seem to enjoy pressing the keys and playing with the stoptabs even though no sounds are heard. (An "emergency PP" switch may prove necessary, disabling all but the softest stops!)

Larry Chace

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