Our Tuning and Maintenance Guarantee:

We proudly offer unparalleled tuning and maintenance to churches, schools, theatres, and homes across a vast portion of the Southeast. Our tuning and maintenance staff practice complete and thorough tuning methods as well as perform a variety of repairs on sight.

If you are not currently a member of the Schlueter family of instruments, we are always excited to survey your instrument as well as issue a competitive tuning rate to insure your instrument is properly maintained in order to insure it provides continuous service for an extended period of time. Should any larger repairs become necessary, our staff will provide you with complete information about your instrument and assist you in forming a reasonable plan for the repair.

Our professional tuning and service staff work with time-honored techniques. We guarantee our tunings for up to a week after the tuning occurs. If you find an error in tuning within this time period, we will return to fix it free-of-charge (certain restrictions apply). Our tuning staff is bonded and insured for the safety of your organ and facility.

Our firm is able to provide unparalleled tuning and maintenance service due to the fact we have an entire staff dedicated solely to your instrument. Whereas smaller firms must stop production each tuning season, our vast staffing can be used to your advantage to provide excellent communication between our staff and yours by way of our dedicated tuning and maintenance team.

Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in becoming a new client for tuning and maintenance of your instrument. We will be glad to incorporate your instrument into one of our many tuning circuits.

So the organ tuner is coming? Helpful Hints:

Occasionally we at the Schlueter Pipe Organ Company Service Department answer the telephone and hear the “anguished” cry of a customer whose organ is terribly out of tune with itself, or with the piano. Their demand is to know why this has happened, since the organ was quite recently tuned. The conversation often continues with our learning that on the day that the organ was tuned that the heat or the air conditioning had not been turned on soon enough for the room – and therefore the air around the organ pipes – to reach the temperature at which the services are usually held, or that the piano tuner did not pitch the piano to the organ.

It is essential and very helpful to make every effort to see that the persons responsible for the music and the persons responsible for setting the thermostats understand the REQUIREMENT that the organ tuning take place while the room is at the same temperature as when it will be played. The need for this is NOT for the comfort of the tuning team. Tuning the organ while the room is at 65° or 85°, and playing it while the room is at 75° will consistently prove unpleasant to most listeners. Even a five-degree difference can be “painful”. A piano tuner MUST take his starting pitch from the organ, and AFTER the organ has been tuned.

Technical Stuff:

Pipe organ sounds are generated by the vibration of a column of air within a pipe. The temperature of this column of air affects the pitch of the note being sounded. As the size, shape, and material used to make each pipe differ, often radically, within the same organ, the individual pipes are affected differently by the same change of temperature. The pipes of the organ do NOT simply all move together to a different pitch level. As the air becomes cooler, it also becomes heavier and will respond more slowly inside the pipe, and the pitch tends to flatten – go lower. Conversely, when the air becomes warmer, it becomes lighter, responds more quickly inside the pipe, and its pitch tends to sharpen – go higher. Reed pipes – Trumpet, Oboe, Clarion, Krummhorn, Posaune, Fagotto, etc. – are affected differently, and often more drastically, by changes in temperature and humidity. Mixtures with their many tiny pipes are also quickly and substantially affected by even slight changes in air temperature.

Another important organ tuning “fact of life” concerns the PLACEMENT of the organ pipes within the sanctuary and the organ case or chamber. Organ pipes that are visible in the room will be quickly affected by the use of heat or air conditioning, while those you cannot see will take longer to be affected. Larger instruments are often in multiple locations on more than one level, each of which will respond differently to any change. It becomes imperative that the heat or air conditioning be on long enough for all divisions and locations of the organ to have STABILIZED in temperature. The location of air outlets and intakes, as well as any spotlights or sunlight falling directly upon a portion of the organ can generate enough heat to “wreck havoc” with the tuning. Alas, even the presence of a large crowd of worshippers takes its toll!

Any of these variables could prevent your organ from stabilizing at the standard A=440 cps. In all cases where a piano will be used with the organ, piano tuners must take their starting pitch from the organ – normally from the mid-range of the Principal 8’ on the Great division, or a similar visible or prominent rank of pipes – AFTER the organ is tuned. This is the optimal method of assuring the compatibility of the two instruments.

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Thank you for your cooperation in these matters. Please share this information with all the appropriate people. In doing so, you are helping us to give you our best!