The photo above was taken in the Maroubra Bay Presbytery early in the project.
The case was later moved to Leura, where further work was installed, a
nd then later still, to the unit at Little Bay.
Doors were then added to enclose the pipework in case other tenants found the organ too loud.
The final configuration of the stop controls differs from what is seen in the photo.
[Photo: Rev. John Reimer]
From the Sydney Organ Journal, (Autumn 2023), Rev John Reimer writes:
There is in my possession a letter dated 27 July 2002 from the late Revd Dr John de Luca, who at the time was parish priest of the Catholic Parish of St Mary & St Joseph, Maroubra Bay. I was the rector of the Anglican parish of Leura, with less than two years to go before my retirement at the usual age of sixty-five. That letter marked an important step in what would be a significant journey for both of us, in planning and bringing to fruition a house pipe organ for John’s own use. He had rung me a few days previously, wondering whether I would be interested in becoming involved in such a project.
I did express cautious interest, and the letter was the inevitable follow-up. It gave specific details of what he was planning. It would use five ranks of pipes, set up as a unit (or “extension”) pipe organ with direct electric action, along with some electronic ranks in the Pedal Department. The scheme would be Baroque rather than Romantic. It seems an unlikely project for two clergymen to be considering. But pipe organs have an ability to provoke the start of highly unlikely projects, many of which never come to completion. This one would succeed, but only after much effort on the part of both of us, and it would take at least eight years.
John’s telephone call had not been completely out of the blue. We had
spoken four years previously at his “weekender” house in Wentworth Falls, when he was considering what his options were. About that time he had tried the electronic organ I had in the rectory at Leura, an instrument which followed the five I had designed and built for Sydney Anglican churches back during the 1980’s. My background was electrical engineering, before training for the Anglican ministry. But we had also met much earlier than 1998. It was early during the 1980’s, shortly after I became rector of St Edmund’s Church at Pagewood. John was an Assistant Priest at the next-door Catholic Parish of Matraville. He came to meet me and have a play on the pipe organ at St Edmund’s, and then we drove to St George’s Church at Earlwood, to try the new electronic organ I had built at their request. This had been my church in my youth. It was where I learned to play, in a fashion, the second-hand pipe organ installed in the church when it was built in 1955. My instrument replaced the pipe organ, which was probably regarded as unrepairable with various faults. He was clearly impressed with the replacement and described it as “somewhat sophisticated”.
Returning now to 2002, it was clear that he had not been as impressed by what he heard in the rectory at Leura. That organ used simpler and cheaper techniques than did the church organs which preceded it. Its sound was not up to their standard. He had come to the conclusion that if he was to have an organ which satisfied him as a player, it would have to be the real thing. As already indicated, the organ he had in mind would be a hybrid, based on five ranks of pipes, along with some pedal stops generated electronically. I regret that I have no knowledge of the source of these ranks. All I recall is that they consisted of pipes already on direct-electric wind-chests. The ranks
were as follows:
[1] Principal 4’ (56 pipes), with an additional top twelve notes to make the rank available at 2’ pitch. Use of the rank at 8’ pitch was to be provided by generating the bottom 8’ octave of sounds electronically.
[2] Gedact 8’ (56 pipes), borrowing the top twelve notes from the 2’ conical flute rank [3] to make the rank available at 4’ pitch.
[3] Conical Flute 2’ (56 pipes), to be used also at 1’ pitch with the top notes being having to be “repeated” by means of the switching system.
[4] Quint 2 2/3’ (56 pipes), to be used also at 1 1/3 pitch with similar treatment of the top notes.
[5] Terz 1 3/5’ (56 pipes).
Ranks [2], [4] and [5] were all sharing one of those chests.
The specification would be thus:
MANUAL I
(1) Principal 8’ [1], with bottom 12 notes electronic.
(2) Gedact 8” [2].
(3) Octav 4’ [1].
(4) Flute 4’ [2], with the top 12 notes from [3].
(5) Nazard 2 2/3’ [4].
(6) Blockflöte 2’ [3].
(7) Larigot 1 1/3’ [4], with the top 12 notes repeated in the switching system.
(8) Octavin 1’ [3], with the top 12 notes repeated in the switching system.
MANUAL II
(9) Principal 8’ (Duplication of (1)).
(10) Gedact 8’ (Duplication of (2)).
(11) Flöte 4’ [3] from Tenor C (44 notes), bottom 12 notes taken from [2].
(12) Nazard 2 2/3’ (Duplication of (5)).
(13) Fifteenth 2’ [1]
(14) Blockflöte 2’ (Duplication of (6)).
(15) Terz 1 3/5’ [5].
(16) Zimbelstern (switch for small electric motor)
PEDAL
(17) Sub Bass 16’ (electronic).
(18) Principal 8’ (electronic).
(19) Gedact Bass 8’ [2]
(20) Choral Bass 4’ [1].
(21) Bassun 16’ (electronic).
Originally, twenty stops were proposed, with (18) possibly replacing (19), but it was finally decided to include both. A tremulant was also proposed for the chest with ranks [3], [4] and [5].
It is likely that I told John that I would not be free to spend much time on his project until my retirement towards the end of March 2004, and that he responded by saying that there was much to be done by himself on the case-work and the setting up of the wind-chests, before my efforts would be needed. At my retirement my wife Robyn and I returned to Sydney, to live in the family house in Earlwood where she had grown up. Whatever time I was able to devote to John’s project before retiring, there is no doubt that I threw myself into the project once I was able to do so. One task was to coach John in good soldering methods. Although there were probably firms capable of providing digital electronic solutions to the switching system that would be needed, John was clear that he wanted a method which
would provide for much of the work to be done by himself, using components readily available over the counter. I set about the design of printed circuit boards which would accommodate the “borrowings” of one type or another involved in his plans. It ended up with twenty-four identical boards which were made professionally by a Sydney firm. The basic circuitry followed established lines already in use in the pipe organ industry. It was certainly not cutting-edge technology, as I had graduated and worked as an engineer in the pre-digital age. But it would be reliable, with ongoing access to replacement parts should they ever be needed. Further tasks involved giving guidance on the construction of the multi-wire cables John would be putting together, which would link the outputs from the playing and stop switch contacts to the input pins of the switching circuit boards. This would mean making soldered connections at the contact ends, terminating at the other ends with soldered connections to small plugs such as are used in computer equipment. This task would be quite daunting, as the space between adjacent pins is only 0.1 of an inch. This would be John’s greatest challenge, to avoid creating solder “bridges” between the pins. There was also the need for printed instructions on the mounting of hundreds of resistors and small diodes on those boards, work which John would be doing. This would still require careful soldering, but fortunately without the high precision just mentioned.
This pipe organ, like all except the very small, needed to be capable of being disassembled in one location and reassembled in another. John had made the case-work and positioned the wind-chests in the Presbytery at South Coogee, but the rest of the work would be done after it had all been moved to his house in the Upper Blue Mountains. By this point he had moved from the house in Wentworth Falls to one in Leura. A significant change was made to the room which would accommodate the organ. Instead of increasing the size of the room sideways, he had a builder raise the height of the ceiling quite a
deal beyond the height of the organ! He was to refer to that room as the “Tower Room”. This was done in the hope of creating some ambience for the pipe sounds.
The need for that type of portability explains the need for the small multi-pin plugs already mentioned. The plugs would engage with similarly small sockets mounted in a central location within the case, from which other cables with appropriate plugs would go to the switching boards, where their terminating ends would be soldered to input pins.
Lack of space means that I should not try to describe the further course of the project in any great detail, except to note that inevitably there were problems to confront and overcome on the way through. John would meet these with an indomitable attitude, and if he could not see the way forward, he would seek the ideas of those who could. In this respect I should mention the names of two men who became involved in the project other than myself. Mr Ken Tyrrell, one of John’s friends from his earlier parish of Revesby, had made John’s harpsichord. Ken made the wooden manuals. Dr Graeme Rawson, a
close friend of mine for many years with our common interest and
commitment to the pipe organ and its music, became interested in the project. Graeme made significant contributions at key points.
But the real hero of the piece was John himself. Having resolved to embark on a particular but very challenging journey, he saw it through to its successful completion, regardless of all the work and frustration that might come with it. This article is an attempt to pay tribute to him and to what he achieved and has special poignancy in view of his sudden death on 18 January 2023.