. STANDING among the organ pipes #1 West Vancouver United Church is Herb Huestis. He

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PERFECT PITCH

The fine art

NEWS photo Stuart Davis

and his wife Marianne, representatives for Casavant Freres, clean and tune organ pipes in
churches and universities. Dirt and the chuige in temperature are an organs’ two worst
enemies.

on ‘imported Scandinavian
furniture, larnps & accessories

20% off

Sale starts
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January 5/85."

{All-sales final.
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selections

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January 9, 1985

Newsroom 985-2131

FASHION
FooD

f fine tuning

HAVING GOOD ears is what makes Marianne
and Herb Huestis’ business so successful,

isn’t people they listen to.

Rather, their well-trained
ears listen to the fine-tuned
sounds of organ pipes, and
if the organs are not fine
tuned, it is their job to make
them so.

The couple, who have
backgrounds in music, organ
tuning and maintenance,
recently tuned the pipe organ
at West Vancouver United
Church, an organ originally
from Ryerson College in
Toronto, that had its pipes
replaced.

“It’s not uncommon for
an organ to have three or
four homes,’’ Marianne
Huestis says. ‘Often the
organs outlive the buildings
they’re put in.”’

The two conditions that
put an organ out of tune,
Huestis says, are the build
up of dirt and the change in
temperature.

“Organs are very sensitive
io changes in teriperature,”’
she says. ‘‘Organ pipes are
all made out of different
materials. Some are wooden,
scme metal, some big, some
small. The metal pipes are
affected most by the
temperature. If an organ is
tuned to one pitch and the
temperature changes, it
sounds different. Our ear
can hear a two to three
degree difference. We tune
a (church) organ to the

‘temperature the church will

be Sunday morning.”
Huestis says an organ is
generally tuned about three
times a year, for the winter,
the summer and possibly be-
fore an important concert.
One interesting story
Huestis tells is of a church in
Grand Prairie, Alberta

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MARIANNE HUESTIS

where a heating, cooling and
humidifier system kept the
temperature and moisture
consistent in the building.
After seven years of not be-
ing tuned, the organ was still
stable and in tune.

but it

Total cleaning of an organ
should be given to a pipe
organ between 10 and 20
years old. This includes
removing all the pipes,
cleaning inside for dust,
vacuuming them and clean-
ing the table they stand on.

“Organs are usually up
high and out of the way, so
the idea of cleaning them is
always an interesting pro-
position,’ Huestis says with
a laugh that tells she enjoys
her job.

After the organ is clean, it
is always ‘horribly out of
tune,” and takes about a full
day to tune, Huestis says.

While the Huestis’ tune
organs three days a week,
they build harpsicords and
early pianos from xits in the
basement of their home two
days a week. But that pat-
tern has been temporarily in-
terrupted, Huestis explains,
because before Christmas
they were tuning five days a
week, and for the month of
January they will be building
five days a week.

The Huestis’ are repre-
sentatives for Casavant
Freres, one of the larger
organ companies, and they
sell organs in Alaska,
Hawaii and Washington,
with service being 80 per
cent of their work.

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980-9211

980-0116

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