[sdiy] One Octave Foot Pedal Project

[Glen]

At 04:18 PM 7/10/04 , harrybissell wrote:
>
>Hiya Linium
>
>Bass pedals in organs seldom exceed 2 1/2 - 3 octaves
>
>Most portable pedals are 1 - 1 1/2 octaves.

Just in case anyone wanted more details:

The AGO (American Guild of Organists) standard for a pedalboard is 32
notes. The surface of the pedalboard is concave in shape, and the pedals
are arranged in a radiating pattern--not parallel to each other. You will
find this on full-size organs, especially pipe organs or electronic organs
built to sound and play like pipe organs.

The BDO standard is 30 notes. I'm not sure what the abbreviation stands
for, but it seems to be a standard somewhere other than in the USA.

Hammond organs with supposedly "full pedalboards" had only 25 notes, the
pedalboard surface is flat, and the pedals are parallel to each other. This
was done as a cost cutting measure, once Laurens Hammond decided that most
organists didn't use the highest notes of the AGO pedalboard very often
anyway! Later, Hammond did produce some organs with full AGO pedalboards,
but this was only done on a few models intended to please the pipe-oriented
AGO crowd.

Smaller organs,  especially those made for home use, often had a 13 note
pedalboard, instead of a full pedalboard. It is flat, with cantilevered
pedals mounted in parallel fashion, permanently attached to the organ. (The
larger pedalboards are not usually permanently attached to the organ.) This
is no doubt a big cost cutting effort, and it relies on the idea that most
beginners won't miss those extra notes anyway.

As for portable organs, such as combo organs, I believe that most of those
had 13 pedals. I can't say that with certainty, because I haven't
personally seen too many portables with a pedalboard attached.

Also, the bottom note is always a "C" note on all the pedalboards I've
seen. (I've seen quite a few.)

As a historical note, there were also a few "double" pedalboards made a
long time ago. I'm told that they had two rows of pedals, with one set
hinged at the organ side of the pedalboard, and the other row of pedals
were hinged at the player's side of the assembly. Yes, one pedalboard
"pointed" toward you, while the other pedalboard "pointed" away from you,
and the two pedalboards met each other in the center of the assembly. It
seems this was an early attempt at a "two-voice" pedal system--not just two
notes, but potentially two different organ voices simultaneously accessible
from the pedalboard. I've never seen one, and they were something of an
experimental feature that apparently died out a long, long time ago.
(Possibly due to the impact of a large meteor?)   :)

So if you want to gather up some maple hardwood and make your own
pedalboard, and you want to make it to some sort of common standard, the
above information should help a little bit. If anyone needs standard
dimensions for pedalsticks, I could probably come up with that also. It
shouldn't be too hard to build your own from scratch, instead of relying on
cannibalizing an existing organ.


later,
Glen