<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><oembed><version>1.0</version><provider_name>First Congregational-Christian Church</provider_name><provider_url>https://www.ngucc.org</provider_url><author_name>admin</author_name><author_url>https://www.ngucc.org/author/admin/</author_url><title>Rebuilding the Organ, Piece by Piece</title><html>&lt;img class=&quot;size-medium wp-image-11496 alignleft&quot; src=&quot;https://www.ngucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_1039-2-225x300.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; width=&quot;225&quot; height=&quot;300&quot;&gt; &lt;img class=&quot;wp-image-11497 alignleft&quot; src=&quot;https://www.ngucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/IMG_1040.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; width=&quot;469&quot; height=&quot;352&quot;&gt;

Wallace Organbuilders began to reassemble the organ on August 17.&nbsp; Every part, gigantic or tiny, was cleaned with a borax and vinegar solution.&nbsp; Then, one by one, in reverse order of removal, each part was put back into the organ case.&nbsp; All these thin wooden strips are the first link connecting the keys to the pipes, which sounds much more simple than it is!&nbsp;

It took about two weeks of tedious work like this before the pipes were replaced, and the grand 162-year-old George Stevens organ&#039;s &quot;blower&quot; filled the wind chests with air and the sanctuary was filled with music once more!

The organ pipes were tuned to a harmonic system as close to original as possible.&nbsp; That, and the rebuilding of the wind chests and repair of pipes, along with the dramatic improvement in the responsiveness of the keys, &lt;span style=&quot;font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, &#039;Segoe UI&#039;, Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, &#039;Helvetica Neue&#039;, sans-serif;&quot;&gt;require our organist to approach the choice of stops(combined instrument sounds) and the actual playing quite differently, and John Terison is on it!&lt;/span&gt;</html><type>rich</type></oembed>