Significant underwriting for the organ was provided by the Scribner and Keeble families.
The pipe organ was installed in 1989 by the Schantz Pipe Organ Company of Orrville, Ohio at Duncan Memorial United Methodist Church in Ashland, Virginia.
According to Dr. Doering, the Organ Professor at Randolph Macon College, the Schantz pipe organ at Duncan Memorial United Methodist Church used on this recording is the finest pipe organ in Ashland, VA.
Schantz Organ Company's engineering staff oversaw every detail from initial design to installation.
Layout of the pipes is distributed high around the Chancel.
The organ is controlled by a computerized piston system, including four levels of memory, and is electrically controlled.
Organ pipes are divided into two basic types – Flue and Reed.
A set of pipes of either type producing the same timbre (resonance) for each different note is called a Rank. The Schantz pipe organ at Duncan Memorial United Methodist Church has 35 Ranks, with 2,086 pipes.
The Scribner-Keeble Memorial Pipe Organ combines Classic and Romantic pipe voicing capabilities to allow it to perform a wider repertoire of musical selections.
Voicing an organ pipe involves the adjustment of two main parameters:
- The tone quality or timbre (resonance), and
- Its loudness.
The voicing of each type of pipe (Flue or Reed) is dramatically different.
These critical adjustments take hours of time by craftsmen with years of experience. This process is to assure each instrument's voice has maximum impact – both dramatic and subtle – within the room in which it is installed.
A team of Schantz voicers traveled to Duncan Memorial United Methodist Church to complete the meticulous task of final tonal regulation for each pipe in the instrument. Final voicing at the church was by Burton K. Tidwell, Associate Tonal Director, assisted by Lee Singleton.
The Schantz Pipe Organ company was founded in 1873 by A.J. Tschantz, (later dropped the initial T to become Schantz). It is the largest and oldest American pipe organ builder of electro-pneumatic pipe organs in North America that is still under management by the founding family.
Like many pipe organ builders, initially most of their early instruments were modest in size and were found within two-hundred miles of the Orrville, Ohio workshop. It was under the leadership of the third generation (following World War II) that the company developed a national reputation.
Today work continues under the management of the fourth generation of the Schantz family. Commissions for the firm include projects ranging in scope from restoration of existing instruments to the construction of entirely new pipe organs. The new organs range in size from modest with a few ranks of pipes, to complex designs for some of the largest churches, cathedrals, and public spaces in the world.