Organ Stop - Notable Organ Stops

Notable Organ Stops

• The loudest organ stop in the world is the Grand Ophicleide located in the Right Pedal division of the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ. It stands on 100″ wind pressure. Rumor has it that the former organ curator always warned the stagehands when the Grand Ophicleide was going to be used, because of the sheer volume.
• The mixture stop with the largest numbers of pipes, called Ple, can be found in Santanyí (Majorca), Spain. It has twenty-two ranks in the left hands and twenty-five in the right.
• There are only two true and complete, non digital, acoustic and down to the sub-sub-contra-C, 64' stops in the world. The Contra-Trombone 64′ in the Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ (click here for a sound sample), and the Diaphone-Dulzian 64′ in the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ (click here for a sound sample). Due to the limitations of most loudspeakers, and the limitations of human hearing, the listener will not actually hear the lowest frequencies in the sample, but will be actually be hearing the harmonics above them.

• Many large organs have a 64′ stop in their stoplist, but nearly all of these are either digital, acoustic imitations-(32′ combined with a 21⅓ extension creating a 64′ impression)- or else a sound sample of a higher-pitched stop electronically altered to sound 1+ octaves lower. The Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ is capable of creating a resultant 128' stop by combining its 64' and 42⅔' stops.
  • These sound samples start with the 16' CCC then goes down 2 octaves to the 64' CCCCC.
• Some other organs also have a part of the lowest octave, usually the top 3 or 4 pipes.
• There are Percussion (tuned and untuned) stops and it is unknown if they are in the Flute, Principal, String, Reed, or Hybrid category.