Meticulous Care for Electro-pneumatic Pipe Organs since 1987.
We base our quote for regular maintenance of your pipe organ on the number of ranks in the organ not the number of stops. Since many organbuilders and organists by extension use the two terms interchangeably, it would be good to explain the difference between them.
The most confusing issue surrounds unification and borrowing of one rank from one manual to another or when a Swell 8� Flute is unified and extended to play in the Pedal division at multiple pitches� a standard practice in most American pipe organs. It is not unusual for this single rank of pipes to play at 16� and 8� from the Swell keyboard as well as 16� and 8� from the Pedalboard as well. Although there are four separate stop tablets/stopknobs at the console, there is still only one rank of pipes from which these four stops are derived.
In the case of a Mixture, several ranks of pipes can come into play when a single stop tablet or stop knob is pulled by the organist. The number of ranks is indicated by a Roman Numeral engraved on the stop� such as Mixture IV, Sesquailtera II or Sharff III.
At Kirk A. Wilson and Associates we base our quotes at a rate of $25 per rank, plus travel time to and from your church billed at a rate of .37 per mile. If we have more than one client in your town we will divide all travel expenses equally between all of our clients in your town.*
PLEASE NOTE: If your town is 100 miles from Abbeville, SC and your church houses a ten rank organ, our base rate will be $250 for the tuning plus an additional $74 for travel time to and from the church.
If we have another client in your area, the fee for travel will be equally divided between both clients.