Facilities to Build the World's Pipe Organ​

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The organ building firm Mascioni regards quality as the first aspect to take into good account. In order to obtain this they check all the different working phases with particular attention. In over one hundred and fifty years the House has never change its well organized method of production, which requires specific competence in conceiving and developing a project, building, voicing, maintaining and restoring organs.

Since quality is always required and each order and environment are peculiar in their requests, each instrument is given its own individuality, which includes phonic composition, architecture and voicing. This demanding commitment has always been present during its 170-year long history, even when organs with electric action but without a case used to look alike. This conduct is still followed nowadays when traditional practices regarding aesthetics and sound have regained their great moment, and the use of mechanical action, the importance of a case and the historically precise voicing are highly considered.

The technical office is located next to the workplace so that the competent workers can follow the manufacture in its different stages: thus first-rate instruments are always built in a coherent way.

Their care in choosing materials is outstanding: the bulky timber which is stocked in the apposite store room inside the factory is definetely preferred: here an average of 200 cubic meters of timber seasons naturally.

For manufacturing every part it is necessary to select the most suitable materials, which must cope with the technical and artistic demands for reliability and long-lastingness: first-rate spruce from Val di Fiemme, Italian walnut, durmast, ebony, bone for keyboards, lamb and sheep skin for the bellows.. In addition to this, appropiate materials are used for all restoration works.

Carpenters work with traditional methods and techniques also when building cases: particular care is given to the features and the arrangement of the veins of the timber. Soundboards are built with the best precision: the firm Mascioni usually installs slider chests but builts also spring chests for particular instruments.

Metal pipes are made traditionally by casting and throwing a sheet on the casting table, working its thickness, then cutting, shaping and soldering it.

The manufacture of all new instruments end inside the laboratories with their complete assemblage and a careful examination, which is carried out in a big special room. Then everything is moved to the place where the organ is destined to live. Here the definitive voicing and tuning are to be accomplished; what is important for the former is how sounds respond to the new environment while the choice of scaling/pitch and temperament influences the latter.

In the last thirty years the organ firm Mascioni has become more and more qualified also in restoring. Accurate works, which adhere completly to the responsible Authority's guidelines and which follow the developing theoretic debate on the subject, have guaranteed very delicate and noteworthy orders.

Besides the firm is also engaged in activities like the maintenence, cleaning and overhaul mainly of its organs: they exploit their excellent knowledge of complex systems which are no longer installed, but still perfectly efficient, such as the various kinds of pneumatic chests.