The Rochford Compton

Tubular Bells

These are sometimes called Cathedral Chimes.

They are a set of Chime bars around a Metre long. They hang from a frame and are struck by wooden hammers when played.
They are usually unseen inside the pipe chambers but we have mounted them outside the chambers in front of the top set of Swell Shutters for visual effect.
The playing mechanism unit was refurbished and tested by Pat Dunham in the workshop prior to mounting.

In May the mounts for the Chimes were attached to the front of the organ. These were bolted to the roof support beam and lower swell shutters for added security. They were then painted matt black, a case of now you see them, now you don't.
When properly lit it will look like the unit is floating in the air in front of the organ.

Mounting the Chimes Chest.
The chimes playing unit is quite heavy so we attached a chain hoist to one of the roof beams. We then winched the unit slowly up the front of the organ to the waiting mounting brackets. Because of the weight of the unit and the need to be absolutely sure that the brackets would be strong enough special brackets were needed. Suitable brackets were not readily available so Pat fabricated them from welded heavy steel angle.
Once the chest was in place and secured with bolts and screws the next job was to hang the chime bars. They are usually hung with the longest on the left to the shortest on the right. For asthetic reasons we decided on a symetrical arrangement, shortest in the middle. This will mean that the wiring will have to be rearranged to make sure that the right notes still play.

Connecting
During August and September the unit was connected to the tonal percussions wind supply and a control cable with test panel was made up and installed in the organ. Tim obtained a genuine Compton relay unit as a donor for the parts needed to connect the unit to the Console.

The chime bars were gold in colour and rather dull in both appearence and tone so as an experiment one was taken back to Pat's worksop and machine polished. To our amazement it polished up with a mirror finish so it was decided to polish them all prior to rehanging. At the same time an experimental suspension harness for the bars was tried to avoid the damping effects on the sound the original mounting and the results were very encouraging.

December
New coloured lighting was installed to show off the hanging bars and they now make an eyecatching centrepiece to the front of the organ.