ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From: Russ Shaner, August 2009
In fact Wurlitzer opus 44 at Rochester’s Regent theatre which I believe was being installed about the
same time that R H-J took gas here had two 3-rank slider chests. One in the Main and one in the Solo.
I know that for a fact because I removed them.
I think on one side were two strings and something else (solo side) and I’d have to look up what was in the main.
One was quite small (the one with the strings) and the other was quite large AND HEAVY!
As I recall there was a primary chest the length of the chests along one side that probably opened a
secondary that let air into a cross-drilled passage under all of the toe holes.
There was a graphite lubricated slider under each toeboard with an action at the end of the chests to
open and close the sliders. Probably very similar to the ones at the Universalist Church.
As I remember the quality of everything looked quite typically Wurlitzer (under all the coal dirt).
There were a lot of strange things in that organ. First of all it was A435.
It had two DC Kinetic blowers, one on each side with a windline going between them over the proscenium.
One of the blower motors had been replaced with an AC motor back in the 1950s (as someone told me at the time).
It had all half moon magnets. It had a very strange 25 note metal (not brass) sax.
It had a 16’ wood diaphone in the solo. Some ranks were on unit chests. I believe it was 10 or 11 ranks.
I’d have to pull out the paperwork. The diaphones are in the M&C at the Clemens Centre (Elmira Theatre) in Elmira, NY.
We have the clarinet on its original unit chest in our small Wurli at the Eisenhart Aud here in Rochester
and the tuned sleighbells on the 4/23. They’re still A435 but who can tell???
We never got the console. It was a situation where the building owner thought the console ‘was’ the organ
and all he had to do was get new speakers. He gave us the ‘stuff’ in the chambers but held the console ransom.
The last I saw of it was in the late 70s on the loading dock of a building he owned with old pallets stacked on
top of it. The console was 3 manuals but I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps it originally had a
short 3rd manual that was replaced with a full one. The top manual had no pistons and I believe played
only ranks on unit chests. The Wurlitzer list mentions ‘additions’ to the organ a few years after it was
built but no mention of what they were. Everything was there except for the trumpet which went to
another organ in a Rochester radio station sometime back in the 30s or 40s although its chest was there
and was mounted by itself away from the other chests. Possibly an addition??
There had been some water damage in the solo and some vandalism of pipework.
Unfortunately I didn’t know a heck of a lot about Wurlitzers at the time and should have documented it better.
No one else in the club had much interest and I had a heck of a time getting help to save what we did.
It had some type of strange relay/switch that sat outside the main chamber beside the blower.
It didn’t look at all like a normal Wurli unit and in fact looked nothing like the one at the
Universalist which was H-J built some six years earlier. The place was FILTHY!
From coal soot and we had very limited lighting.
It played up and out through tone chutes so everything we saved had to come down through the trap doors.
We got what seemed to be ‘good’ and had to leave a lot behind to come down with the building.
We removed it when the theatre came down in the early 1970s.
We dumped the larger slider chest a few years ago when we lost a lot of our storage.
I think the other one might be still stored away.