Seabreeze United Church of Christ

Dr. James Gettemy was pastor at Seabreeze United Church of Christ for 11 years. Among his many contributions to the church, he strongly stressed the importance of music in services. As an expression of the congregation's appreciation for his ministry, the new pipe organ was dedicated and designated the Dr. James Noah Gettemy Pipe Organ.

There are three hand manuals and one pedal manual.

The organ has 20 stops and 29 ranks or pipes.

There are 5,700 Board Feet of wood; Oak, Poplar, Basswood for carvings and keyboard.

Several thousand screws and pins.

It took 6,000 man hours to build, and it took three weeks to install the organ piece by piece.

The organ weighs 12,000 pounds.

There are 1,316 pipes: the smallest is the size of a pencil; the largest is 10 feet tall.

On a Tracker organ everything is done manually. All stops must be pulled out by the organist. There is an electric bellows pumping air into the organ chamber, but the rest is done by the organist. Originally, the organist also had to pump Tracker organs with his/her feet.

Tracker organs are very much like organs before the days of electricity. Tracker organs were built to enable the organist's touch of the keys to have direct control over the mechanical action of the organ. With the birth of electricity, many organs were changed to electroneumatic instruments. Instead of human touch, an electric impulse activated the sound. It was the beginning of electronic organs, as we know them today.

Currently, the worlds largest Tracker action organ was built by Ronald Sharp and is in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia, and includes over 10,500 pipes. As a comparicon ours has 1,316 pipes.

🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵🎵