Workshop

Technical Facilities

C. B. Fisk, Inc. is located in a modern 25,000 square foot building constructed expressly for the making of pipe organs. Located on three acres of land, the building and grounds are wholly owned by the company. Facilities include:

• A fully-equipped woodshop and mill room capable of making every kind of wooden part or structure, with dedicated space for seasoning 5,000 board feet of lumber.
• A machine shop completely furnished with all the tools necessary to weld, shape, fabricate and assemble steel and aluminum.
• A complete pipe shop including facilities for alloying and casting our own sheets of pipe metal up to 16 feet in length.
• A drafting and design room computerized for AutoCAD and related programs.
• A model room for the construction of scale models of the clients’ buildings and 3-D design of the organs for them.
• Three voicing rooms including facilities for voicing reeds directly on their windchests.
• A paint and finishing shop for custom coloring and sealing of wood and metal.
• Two large crane- and lift-equipped rooms for the in-shop assembly of organs.

Our stable workforce of twenty-five organbuilders is the key to the strength of the company. Nearly a dozen employees have 25+ years experience with an average company-wide tenure of more than 15 years. More than a third of all shop members are organists, with many more musicians in the group. New hires spend five years as apprentices, moving through the various departments of the firm to gain all-around experience as organbuilders before specializing in a chosen area.

Our ability to construct an entire organ on our own premises is the most important component in our quality control. Keyboards, windchests, pipemetal, casework, carving, wedge bellows making, visual design and installation, often outsourced by our competitors, are all accomplished by our own staff members. Supply is kept to a very limited number of firms with whom we have long-established professional relationships, and on whom we can rely to provide us with parts and materials exactly as we specify them. Low quality components are never used, only the best and longest lasting parts are good enough for inclusion in a Fisk organ.

The company library maintains a collection of stereo slides and measurement notebooks covering visits to over one hundred historic organs, with particular emphasis on the work of Schnitger, Silbermann, Cavaillé-Coll and related builders, but also including organs of Holland, England, Spain, Italy and Mexico. More than a dozen Fisk organbuilders, designers and voicers have taken advantage of company supported research trips to study the construction methods and voicing techniques of the historic builders. Our installation at the Cathedral in Lausanne, Switzerland gave even more of our staff the opportunity to examine the nearby work of the ancient masters first hand.