ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From: Kevin King, May 2005
Many years back, our Nor-Cal chapter tried to arrange to get the complete Center organ from Bill Brown.
For one reason or another the two parties were never able to come to an agreement.
We wanted to keep the whole organ together and install it in Berkeley.
Many years passed.....we had already acquired the Toledo Paramount Publix organ and installed it at Berkeley.
More time passed and Bill had decided to get rid of the Center organ.
As parts were sold off we were able to get the console and several rare ranks and percussion to add in the
enlargement of the Berkeley organ. The bulk of the Center organ going into the Phoenix Orpheum.
From: Chris Nichols, November 2009
The specs for both the Center and Music Hall instruments were by Kimball and the organs were built by Wurlitzer.
There are a number of very “non-Wurlitzer” names used on the Center organ and I suspect the Tibia Minor is one of them.
Some others are Spitzflute Celeste (but there was no Spitzflute unison), Tuba Sonora and Diaphone/Phonon Diapason.
It also had an English Horn and an English Post Horn.
We (Berkeley) have the English Horn and have renamed it on the stop tabs to Cor Anglais to help prevent embarrassing accidents.
The manual ranks were mostly 73 notes instead of the 61 which Wurlitzer normally used.
The organ had 34 ranks, but there were only 16 8’ stops on the Great.
There were 26 8’ stops on the Orchestral, two of which brought on 2 ranks (Violins II and Muted Violins II)
and one of which is labeled “Orch Oboe (SYN)”. There was no real Orch Oboe, but it did have the “English Horn”.
There is also a 4’ Traverse Flute on the Accompaniment, Great, and Orchestral, however the three flutes in
the organ were Concert Flute, Spitzflute Celeste, and Harmonic Flute.
I suspect the 4’ Traverse Flute was the 4’ Concert Flute.
I would also guess that the Spitzflute Celeste was a Concert Flute Celeste.
From: Chris Nichols, January 2012
See the stop list and the chamber analysis for the Center Organ.
Specification
Note that one of the original stop tabs in the Orchestral was labeled “Orch Oboe (SYN)”.
It is listed this way in the stop list. You will notice that much of the nomenclature is
Kimball, e.g. Tuba Sonora, Tibia Minor. The English Horn is an English Horn, not an English Post Horn.
At Berkeley we decided to call it a Cor Anglais so that no one confuses it with the Post Horn.
That could be quite rude if you selected the wrong one… in either direction.
The only buzzy they had was the Kinura.
You might note in the chamber analysis at the link above, that there were no 61 note ranks.
They were all 73 or greater. This is standard Kimball so that you would not run out of notes with a 4’ coupler on.
Rudy Frey bought the console, 4 ranks, and the chests to go with the ranks from Bill Brown and donated them to NorCal.
When we were originally looking for an organ we approached Bill about donating it.
At that time he still had an idea about opening another restaurant and wanted to keep it.
Later when he decided to break it up he said that he wished he had given it to us.
The four ranks we got were the Viola Diapason, English Horn, French Horn, and Tromba.
The Viola Diapason sounds very much like the Horn Diapason. We have the Viola Diapason tuned to celeste gently with the Horn Diapason.
The Tromba is pretty much a 15” Style D Trumpet. It does George Wright arrangements beautifully.
The French Horn is a lovely stop. It does not sound like an E.M. Skinner French Horn, but has a nice quality.
It has a little bit of brightness to it.
The Viola Diapason and Tromba go to 16’, but we do not have the 16s installed yet (we only have fourteen 16’ ranks playing currently).
According to the Junchen/Weiler Wurlitzer book, Wurlitzer made 3 8’ Cor Anglais and 13 French Horns.
The Tromba and Viola Diapason are not mentioned in the list of rarities.
When Chris Gorsuch was rehearsing at Berkeley one tim he went up into the chambers and noted that
the Viola Diapason had a very slight taper to the pipes (they were smaller in diameter at the top than at the mouth).
The music rack was down covering the center part of the upper main rail.
If you look at a picture of the console as it is now you will see
that the top rail goes all the way across. The console is still pneumatic.
The blow boxes for these extra stops were in the console. They just weren’t hooked to anything.
You might also note that the swell shoe indicators are on the name board.
Normally they are in the middle of the upper main rail, but since that was covered they moved them.
You wouldn’t believe the number of pieces there are for each of those indicators.
They actually go around one of the action boxes in the back.