Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo. A capable organ, divided and situated in the gallery with the console central. Original all-pneumatic action by Chestnutt of Waterford........mad stuff to maintain owing to its complexity. Reliable operation relies on good connections and sealing between all these small lead tubes, as well as pneumatics internally........it gets to be troublesome after 80 or 90 years!
The fix? We swapped it all out for efficient and reliable pallet magnets, courtesy of Peterson in Illinois.....wonderful products, ever reliable.......thank you Scott Peterson! These magnets also work well for reeds too (reeds are terribly sensitive to pallet bounce)......which can be rather unforgiving. Below you can see the old pneumatic motors on the left, and the new Peterson units on the right.
The slight downside of this is that the electrical complexity of controlling an electro-magnet for every single pipe in the organ is considerable. We fit a switching system for this purpose. Below is a photo of a switching system we fitted elsewhere.
