Boardwalk Hall- The tremolo system

hey folks back in the blower room look familiar see everything behind me there alright and there's the blowers again after that last video some people expressed an interest in the tremolo system on this organ which is really a great ingenious piece of work and so this video is going to be just about how the tremolo is operate in this organ now as you'll see there used to be the motorized controls for left and right side separately the left side which was disconnected many years ago is now run by the Opus 2 system for the impulses and stuff so it's motor is missing it's disconnected on the right side the motor is still there and does actually operate the everything on the right side so I'm gonna turn the camera around here alright so this is the master tremolo system for the entire organ right here okay I brought a light down here with me because it's pretty dark okay so here's how this works here's a motor right there's a chain driving a wheel up there see that right as the wheel spins around it trips a switch I guess that's a switch I don't think that's like a Hall effect sensor or anything but there it is right up there those pulses are then sent to all of the Tremeloes throughout the organ dump valves on each reservoir that is affected by tremolo and we'll make them work and make them operate now the great thing about this setup in the old days was the speed control and this is really this is really genius okay so up there are what sort of looked like two wiffle tree swell motors bag hanging down there in this lever what would happen is when you were at the console and you rotated the speed control for The Tremeloes it would activate pneumatics you can see one two three four five six seven eight eight magnets up on top there see those and inside is you know is it's a wiffle tree small shaped motor and it pulls on this lever okay the lever comes down and would actually rotate stops on an old GE rheostat so that's in the full up position and that's in the down position these wires here would then go to the motor which would affect the speed of The Tremeloes now you notice those wires are not connected and I asked about this and you have to remember this didn't occur to me this is an alternating current motor when the organ was originally installed it was all direct current you can't use this style of rheostat on an AC motor so the speed control is not operating now what they do have is that control right there and you can see it says organ variable speed motor and it's set right there that is controlling the speed of The Tremeloes now not the the thing so you can't control the speed of the Tremeloes from the console right now now interestingly there are some markings here I don't know if that's coming through on the camera not it says low 25 inches July 21 46 and high 80 July 21 1946 right there I'm not sure what that refers to but there is this is easy to tell what this refers to here that says great solo strings echo and gallery - okay and then for the old one over here which is not available swell choir string one and three gallery four and fanfare so all of this controlled as I said everything basically on the left side of the auditorium and that controlled everything on the right side of the auditorium and still does now one thing I'm not sure about this this magnetic pickup up there I don't know how it produces its pulses because if it's just an extremely short sharp pulse it wouldn't give the dumbbells time to operate so I don't know exactly how that operated but it works somehow because it really works well and there's not much else to show here but I do want to make one one point of the improvisation Eicher of some of this stuff the you look at this where the motor used to be you look up here okay that is a bicycle chain ring that is not some adapted industrial part or anything that is actually from a bicycle I can tell you right now and and yes that is what's over there - I mean it is literally a bicycle party so maybe MIT mirages into cycling maybe they had some bikes lying around the shop you know and they just wanted to do it that way but one way or another oh okay well here's an interesting little thing that didn't even occur to me here's the pick up wheel on the side that that used to operate and it actually has

Channel: cnagorka

Views: 11,709

Keywords: organ, Boardwalk Hall Organ

Id: NTwfVLBFyRI

Length: 6min 47sec (407 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 22 2018