Restoration, improvements and rebuilding
Dingles Steam Village have very kindly offered and provided storage facilities for the "Dartford Warbler" , and have expressed the wish that the organ should be installed there to become a major feature, alongside their splendid collection of steam engines, vintage vehicles, fairground rides and various memorabilia.
This would be a wonderful home for the organ as not only would it provide an excellent venue for concerts and other events, but it means the Compton would get played regularly as an attraction of great entertainment, cultural and educational interest. To this end, we really would like to do justice to this fine instrument and give Dingles something to be truly proud of.
Firstly, as the organ had deteriorated through many years of neglect, the whole organ has been given a thorough programme of restoration . Taking us a year and a half, and with other work still to be done, this has involved:
Cleaning, repairing/releathering rewiring and polishing all pipe chests, tremulants, tuned percussions and the toy counter
Reconditioning and building-up a new specification console incorporating the old Gunton Hall console and parts from the illuminated console from the Arthur Russell Studios, Malvern / Odeon,Kingston-upon-Thames
The Opus Two Relay System
While the organ’s original electromagnetic relay system (akin to an old fashioned telephone exchange/switchboard) would be adequate to get it playing again, this would involve very much re-connection work (patching through thousands of unlabelled cotton-covered wires, and would limit the instrument to how it was in the past. This would still leave us with the ever-present risk of technical faults arising from the age and condition of the old wiring and brittle contacts. As we wanted to provide a first-class reliable, responsive and fully functional concert instrument , we felt it was time, after 73 years, that the Compton's control system was modernised and upgraded by installing “Opus Two” . This enables:
Console control – stop action and combination piston setting, with many memory banks so different organists can store all their own preferred settings. Key and pedal contacts replaced with "Hall effect" sensors on first and second touch giving reliable and maintenance free response.
Modular installation of pipe ranks and percussions, with the ability to easily change or add new ones –eg Strings and Oboe ranks, Melotone and a real grand piano
MIDI input and output. This will allow us to add and play new digitally sampled voices: We will be sampling the Melotone from the ABC Plymouth organ (now gone off to a new home in London) and adding it to the Dingles Compton, so that we can enjoy “The Plymouth Sound” in the South-West once again. We have decided to push ahead with installing the OPus Two control system on the console (well ahead of the chamber installation work) in order to make the console MIDI compatible. THIS MEANS WE CAN PLAY DIGITALLY SAMPLED PIPE SOUNDS FROM THE CONSOLE (VIA A PC) AND BE ABLE TO HAVE THEATRE ORGAN CONCERTS AT DINGLES AS SOON AS THIS WORK IS COMPLETED. This is now up and running and sounds magnificent.
Record/Playback function – an organist can record tracks and whole concerts on the organ digitally onto a computer drive or memory card, and this data will play back the organ. This means the organ can be featured and played at any time if an organist is unavailable, and link up with audio-visual screen presentations such as silent film accompaniment.
The Opus Two will also reduce the amount of cabling needed to the various parts of the console and the rest of the organ, with a “wireless” option perfectly possible which means we can have a second movable console off- stage or in the auditorium when the stage space is being used by bands, choirs etc.
Pipe Organ Installation
Current plans at Dingles aim for a multi-purpose lecture theatre into which the organ will be installed. We want to present the organ in the best possible way, so not only would we need it to sound good when it is installed, we will also want it to look good. We hope to install the organ in chambers with glass windows so that is visible to the audience – especially with the percussions working away on view, this should make a good spectacle in itself. We will also want the organ console to rise up out of the ground as it used to from the orchestra pit in the State/Granada Cinema at Dartford, and to add to the authenticity, we have reconstructed the console, adding the illuminated surrounds from the Odeon, Kingston-on-Thames/ Arthur Russell Studio, Malvern Compton.
