When Fifth Generation Organ Builder Cornell Zimmer Saw His Industry Begin to Flounder

Zimmer Organs - 1

[Business Development]

Case Study: Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders

Hed: Combining Old and New Technologies Keeps a Company Up-to-Date

Deck: Digital Technology Carries Pipe Organ Builder into the Future

Summary: the Cornel Zimmer Organ Company makes the best of two worlds, combining new and old technology in a modern, highly successful organ building and refurbishing business.

Pull quote: "To stay in the church organ market you had to go with digital technology in order to compete. Digital technology allows us to build an organ of suitable size for a lot less money." Cornel Zimmer, president, Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders

St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta lost a pipe organ on the day after Easter 1999. It was part of a complete building renovation that included refurbishing the 40-year-old organ’s traditional pipes and updating its sound with the addition of electronic digital technology.

"It's a myth that a pipe organ will last 100 years," says company president Cornel Zimmer, the president of the company that did the work on St. Luke's organ. "Pipe organs rarely go for that long without extensive rebuilding and maintenance along the way. A lot of what we do involves taking a large organ that's starting to fail mechanically and refurbish it, building a new console and making additions to it."

With gross sales topping $1 million in 2000 and a year's backlog of projects, Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders of Denver, N.C. has no trouble finding business. Word of mouth and advertisements in trade journals such as American Organist Magazine bring calls from churches around the country.

Offering both new equipment and repairs broadens Zimmer’s market. Besides refurbishing St. Luke's organ, Zimmer built the church a five-manual organ console -- an instrument with five keyboards and a pedal board played by the organist’s feet. In addition to the new console, a number of new stops notes with unique tone qualities like reeds or brass were added, some using pipes, some produced digitally.

"I grew up with the idea that electronic organs and electronic sounds in organs were bad," says Robert Poovey, St. Luke's music director. "It took me a long time to get where I was comfortable with the thought of doing anything other than the low-pitched pedal stops electronically, but the more I heard of what Zimmer was doing the more I began to see that digital sounds don't have to be thought of as a bad thing."

Go With the Flow

The combination of new and old technology, building and refurbishing, is typical of the projects on Zimmer's crowded 2001 schedule. In his view, expanding into the field of electronic organ technology is the only way to keep a staff of talented organ craftsmen, pipe makers and "voicers" busy building pipe organs even if some of the notes are made without pipes.

"To stay in the church-organ market you have to go with digital technology in order to compete," Zimmer says. "It allows us to build an organ of suitable size for a lot less money."

Zimmer's willingness to accept new ideas sparked economic life in a stagnant organ building market during the late 1980s. Zimmer was working in his family's organ business and serving as vice president of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA) based in Chicago Ridge, Ill. Due to increased competition from digital organs, he and a few others members were assigned to come up with some ways of promoting traditional pipe organs.

"I investigated the digital manufacturers and found what they were doing interesting," says Zimmer. "I said, 'This isn't so bad. This stuff is getting better and we're just getting more expensive.'"

Thus inspired, Zimmer started his own company in 1992, and began working with the Walker Technical Company of Zionsville, Penn. Walker's system adds digital voices to both old and new pipe organs. Zimmer calls Walker's electronic tone generating equipment and control systems "phenomenal." Even some of the best organists and builders have a very difficult time telling the difference between the tones made by traditional pipes and those that Walker makes digitally.

"By means of digital technology our equipment generates and plays the pipe organ sounds that used to be done by pipes," says John Carpenter, president of Walker Technology. "It enables Zimmer to provide a highly customized instrument."

What's Inside?

Technically, bridging the old and new technologies is not difficult. Speakers for the digital sound are located close to the pipes they need to blend with. Then, using a program developed by Walker, Zimmer’s pipe "voicer" -- a technician who specializes in this work -- can fine-tune each digital note by using more than 30 parameters to make a perfect match between the digital voice and the acoustic notes from the pipes. This process can take months.

“Needless to say, the voicer has to know what to listen for, as (this critical step) is still done by ear,” Zimmer says. “It’s quite a lot of work to make it all come together properly.”

The largest pipes are usually the first to go digital, since they tend to be more expensive; also, low organ tones can be reproduced very accurately. Reeds are also likely candidates for digital replacement because pipe reeds are susceptible to tuning problems which digital technology alleviates.

“The technical challenge of combining the two technologies is primarily working with two different types of action and tone generation,” Zimmer says. “Getting everything to work together as one seamless instrument takes quite a lot of attention to minute details in both software and hardware.”

Controversy

Not everyone shares Zimmer's enthusiasm for integrating digital technology into church organs. Members of APOBA have spent several years trying to define just how much a pipe organ can be "enhanced" with digital technology and still maintain its integrity as a natural wind instrument. According to APOBA president Charles Hendrickson, the organization has 31 member firms, handling about 30 percent of all organ building and refurbishing done in the United States.

"Our trade organization has taken a very strong position on this," says Hendrickson, who is also president of the Hendrickson Organ Company in St. Peter, Minn. "Our members don't use digital voices except in a very peripheral manner. We decided we wanted to be a group of builders that were principally producing organs with pipes rather than digital voices."

Leonard Berghaus, president of Berghaus Organs in Bellwood, Ill., and an APOBA member, builds and refurbishes purely mechanical organs. He uses electricity only to operate the light above the keyboard, and the fan that blows wind into the organ pipes. Although APOBA allows the use of digital technology when space and cost prohibit the installation of the largest 32-foot pipes, Berghaus does not use it.

On the Other Hand

Back at St. Luke's, however, music director Poovey is thrilled with his organ's new sound. After a year of church renovation, the organ was reinstalled in April 2000. Since then Zimmer's voicer, Dan Angerstein, has continued to work with Poovey on the organ's sound. Angerstein's visits to the church once every two or three weeks allow him to make subtle adjustments and give Poovey time to mull over the results.

"There is tremendous flexibility," Poovey says. "We had to go back and have some pipes remade. If a pipe wasn't behaving properly or couldn't be made to do what it needed to do, it was replaced. This is what high quality builders do."

At a Glance

Name: Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders

URL:

Location: Denver, N.C.

Founder: Cornel Zimmer

Founded: 1992

Industry: Pipe Organ

Employees: 11

Revenues: Gross sales of $1-$1.2 million in 2000

When Fifth Generation Organ Builder Cornell Zimmer Saw His Industry Begin to Flounder

Go With the Flow

Controversy

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