About the Rodgers/Reuter Organ at Westminster United Methodist Church…..
The heart of the organ at Wesminster UMC is a 21 rank (a rank is one set of 61 pipes) Reuter pipe organ installed in 1967. When the console began to show wear, the decision was made to replace the console and augment the 21 pipe ranks with additional digital voices. The new console and digital augmentation was designed and installed by the R.A. Daffer company, a representative of the Rodgers Organ Corporation. Rodgers digital voices are sampled from actual pipes on the finest organs, worldwide. When a digital stop is selected, the organ instantly plays back a recording of a real pipe! Through additional technology, the organ also tracks the tuning of the winded pipes and adjusts the digital ranks to match, every time the organ is powered on.
The finished project, installed in the Fall of 2012, is a 99 rank, 76 stop instrument with three manuals and an antiphonal division which speaks from the back of the sanctuary. The console has 100 levels of memory, the ability to record and play back, and full MIDI capability. The digital voices speak through 12 speaker cabinets and four subwoofers, which are hidden in the organ chambers. One of the highlights of the instrument is the new “Westminster Trumpet” stop which speaks through an independent audio system at the back of the church. This stop is sampled from a horizontal trumpet rank.
