Leveraged fallout

As the liturgy began today I quickly realized that as I played on the Great with the Swell coupled down, one note, tenor d-sharp, was not coupling. This kind of thing happens occasionally as the "coupler levers" shift slightly and need to be nudged back into place. At the next opportunity I pulled the back off of the console expecting to find just that. Instead, there was simply NO COUPLER LEVER present for that note, just the other 55. Later I gave a thorough look through the console to see if it had somehow fallen out; it was nowhere in sight. This particular mechanism is at the top of the console and below it is another coupler mechanism with 56 more coupler levers just like it except even longer. Below that is a maze of trackers through which I can't quite imagine anything with the mass of this part, falling.

I sent a plea for help to Dave Wigton who services the instrument, and George Bozeman, who rebuilt it in the 1970's. George wrote back almost immediately to say that indeed, these coupler levers DO sometimes fall out and land beyond and below the surrounding action. I presume that this is what happened.

As this note is an important one, and it may take awhile to get a replacement made, I removed an identical coupler lever from a note at the very top of the keyboard and placed in tenor d-sharp position, and bingo, I had a fully working coupler, except for the one very high note.

Another day, another lesson in the mechanisms of the Mighty Hook! The tuning is holding well but the swell Cornopean is beginning to drift on some notes. Soon the temps will call for some touch-up tuning, but not much more than that.