CHORD Project

The Donor

The Clemson University College of Engineering and Science has received the donation of a large electronic organ built in the early 1970's by it owner, William J. Park (CU Class of 48), shown here at the console. The console and the bench were entirely handcrafted from solid walnut and walnut veneer plywood. Mr. Park was CEO of George W. Park Seed Co. until 1990, and remained as Chairman of the Board until his retirement in 1995. He has worked on many projects since then, including rebuilding a century-old player piano and restoring a 1941 Lincoln Continental convertible.

The original installation.

The following features are visible here:

Behind and to the left of the console is the rack of amplifiers (26 channels in all) sitting atop one of the 15" woofers.

Behind and above is one of the speaker banks with the Glockenspiel in the center.

The electronics cabinet is mostly hidden behind the console (see photos below), as is another 15" woofer and another cabinet of speakers.

At the far right of the picture are more speakers and a partial view of the tubular chimes. The mechanical band box (drums, cymbals, wood block, etc., all played from the keyboards and pedalboard) is hidden behind the tubular chimes.

The strange tripod thing between the console and the chimes is a fancy wine bottle opener.

The original of the previous picture was rather low resolution. This one is somewhat better. More clearly visible are the tubular chimes, with the band box behind. The white circular thing behind the chimes is the snare drum, the bottom two bells of the sleigh bells are barely visible at the lower left of the chimes, and the triangle is barely visible to the lower right of the chimes. The Chilean Hurdy Gurdy restored by Mr. Park is at the far right of the picture, the white area at extreme right are the pipes that make the sound. (The Hurdy Gurdy is not, of course, part of the organ.)

The electronics cabinet

The first layer of circuits in the electronics cabinet. The top two rows on both panels are the four unified ranks. The five pedal ranks are the lower three rows on the right-side panel. The volume control circuits are in the middle left of the pedal ranks, and obviously look different from the other boards. Partially visible at the very bottom, mounted flat on the bottom of the cabinet is one of the Choir ranks. Also visible is the Tibia sustain mechanism (the vertical silvery box just below the far side of the fluorescent tube) and the Leslie Speaker interface box just below the sustain mechanism.

The second layer of circuit boards. Again, one of the Choir ranks is visible at the very bottom. The ranks on the panel, from top to bottom are Great 4', two 8' Great ranks, and the 16' Great rank. The bottom rank on the panel is the other Choir rank.

The third and final layer of circuits. Again visible is one of the choir ranks mounted flat at the bottom. The five ranks on the panel, from top to bottom, are Solo 4', Solo 8', Solo 16' ,Swell 8' (note the two tone changers at the end of that row, giving 16 voices instead of the usual 8 voices per rank), and Swell 4'.

This page last updated at 3:00 PM on Mon, Apr 23, 2007

This page last updated at 3:00 PM on Mon, Apr 23, 2007
CHORD site maintained by Dr. William Park. Please address comments or suggestions to parkw@ces.clemson.edu