Anatomy of a WurliTzer Theatre Pipe Organ
SLEIGH BELLS
When the Sleigh Bells are activated the pneumatic, which is hinged at the top,
is inflated throwing the strap of bells towards the right until the limit stop is
reached. Everything comes to a sudden stop at which time the bells ring.
At the top of the action is a set of contacts to cause the action to reiterate. The
contacts open when the pneumatic inflate, causing the pneumatic to deflate which closes the
contacts again which causes the pneumatic to inflate again etc, until the effect is turned off.
This instrument has the single strap of 5 bells which play from every note on the lower keyboard
instead of a set of 25 actions, with 99 bells, which play from 25 notes on the keyboard usually
found on larger instruments. Balancing the extra cost and space for the 25 note tuned set against
the amount of use these generally get (mostly just before Christmas) the single strap is probably
not significantly inferior.
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