2021-07-12 - This is the only Hutchings concert organ still extant, although in the first decade of the 20th century Hutchings instruments were considered state of the Art and installed in a number of prestigious institutions and concert halls. Refurbished and releathered in 1947 by Alfred Mangler and Apard Fazakas, both former Hutchings employees who helped build the organ originally; provided with a new Schantz pneumatic console in 1949; and received restorative repairs by Nelson Barden and Associates in the early 1980s. Potter-Rathbun was the Moller rep for the New England territory at the time, and replaced the Schantz console with a new solid-state Moller product having a Peterson control system, but unfortunately replaced the original Hutchings sidebar pitman chests with Moller slider chests, adversely affecting the voicing-- especially the speech. No other tonal changes are known to have been made at this time, but at some point in the organ's history the diapason chorus has been goosed. By 2021 the organ was beginning to show signs of unreliability, and the control system is being upgrade by the Ortloff Organ Co. with a new state of the art Peterson control system. -Scot Huntington
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