Finally, the PipeMare Flute windchest is (almost) finished. It has been thoroughly pressure tested and the wooden pipes has been mounted. Here it is, placed up-side down (when mounted inside the PipeMare cabinet, the pipes will be hanging down from the windchest):
I’ve done nothing to make the windchest look good, because it will be completely hidden when mounted inside the cabinet.
There are some minor issues with a few of the pipes and/or valves that need to be solved, but that is not a problem. A more serious problem is that several of the pipes are overblowing at the 3″ w.c. test pressure. This is not surprising, as they are from an organ with a 2″ w.c. pressure. So, now we need to find a way to deal with this.
There are basically three options:
- We can try to restrict the air pathways to the overblowing pipes as a way to reduce the effective pressure and flow to the pipe. This is a very low-tech solution, but might result in unbalanced volume levels from pipe to pipe.
- We can build a secondary pressure regulator between the PipeWind manifold to reduce the main 3″ pressure to a 2″ pressure specifically for the Flute rank. This is clearly the most complicated solution. It could be fun to build, but would introduce another significant delay to an already severely delayed project.
- The third option is actually absurdly simple: Reduce the organ main pressure. Both the PipeDream61 pipes (designed for 3″ w.c.) and the PipeMare Accordion can easily work on a lower pressure, like 2.5″, but there might be a problem with the PipeMare harmonic piccolos. These pipes are indeed designed to overblow on purpose to sound an octave above normal, helped by the small puncture at the middle of the pipe tube. So, we’ll have to do some more precise tests of both the piccolo and flute windchests to see, if there is a sweet spot, where both pipe ranks speak nicely.
We’ll try out option 3, and if that doesn’t work out, we’ll consider options 1 and 2.