Correction: Monday, May 30, Email address corrected.
By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Chris Hund is one of the youngest technicians in his profession.
At the beginning of the year, he and his wife bought Hays Organ Service from Steve Demuth, who had owned and operated the business for 48 years.
Demuth said organ technicians are a vanishing breed. Many are aging, have retired or passed away.
As this has happened, Hund's service area has expanded significantly. He services organs across Kansas and much of Nebraska. He and his wife, Laura, recently logged 1,700 miles in just two weeks of work.
When Demuth, 68, started the business, he was mostly working on home organs. Most organists had organs in their homes on which they practiced.
Today Hund's work primarily focuses on digital pianos and church organs, both traditional pipe organs and electronic instruments. Some of the pipe organs are as much as 100 years old.
Hund said maintaining the organs is essential to church culture.
"If you don't have music, you don't have a service, not in the same way," he said.
Hund took an unlikely path into the music world. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Kansas State University and worked for Midwest Energy for a time.
However, he said he was interested in finding another career path that included more flexibility.
Demuth's daughter married Hund's brother and the two happened to discuss Demuth's impending retirement.
Demuth said he wasn't quite ready to retire, but a bout of COVID resulted in the loss of his high-range hearing, which is essential when tuning an organ.
Hund agreed to shadow Demuth on a job to see what the business was all about. That turned into about six months, and on Jan. 1, Hund and his wife officially assumed control over the business. Demuth has remained on with the business as a consultant.
"In this field, you have to have an electronic background, be mechanically capable and you've got to have some music skills," Demuth said. ... "And you have to like to travel because they don't bring the organs to you."
Pipe organs can be unique to the church or building into which they are installed with no manuals or training that can prepare you for that specific instrument.
This is why Demuth's continued assistance has been invaluable, Hund said.
The organ chests control the airflow with a rubber cloth or leather. Those can wear out over about 80 years and result in the instrument needing to be rebuilt, Demuth said.
For most churches, any type of replacement of an organ would be far too cost restrictive. Even the tuning of an organ takes hours of what Demuth explained as stretching and contortion to reach into the tight spaces that hold the pipes.
Tuning can greatly affect the sound of the music. Demuth said masters, such as Bach, composed for organs with different tuning than is generally used today. Modern organs can be adjusted to fit that tuning so the music matches the composer's intent.
Mice often make mischief in organs, especially those in older, rural churches. Demuth was once called to a church to repair an organ at a rural church near Larned. He suspected mice had damaged the organ based on the instrument's symptoms.
Demuth fixed the organ, but in two weeks, church officials called him complaining about problems with the organ.
He returned to find mice, in that short time, had filled one of the organ's boxes, which was about a cubic foot, with milo. Curiously, one of the church members told Demuth the nearest milo field was three-quarters of a mile away.
Not only is there a dwindling number of organ technicians, but there is also a lack of organists. Demuth said many churches are now sharing organists to keep up with the demand.
Playing the organ is similar, but yet different and more complex than playing the piano.
Organs have two keyboards plus pedals, whereas a piano only has damper pedals. Organs can have much larger ranges than pianos, and the sheet music is different.
"There are stops on an organ that are strictly an organ stop," Demuth said. "They are not borrowed from any other type of instrument. A trumpet stop is obviously a trumpet or oboe or anything like that. ... "The pipes are tailored to meet that tonal quality."
Hund said, "I can't think of any other instrument that you can play so many unique sounds all together by the press of a key. It is really a unique instrument, and I would hate to see it go away."
As the Hunds move forward with with the business, Chris said he hopes to work with churches to do preventive maintenance to reduce the number of hours and miles the couple is on the road.
The Hunds work out of a home office. Hays Organ Service can be reached at 785-261-1890 or by email at [email protected]. You can also learn more on their website haysorganservice.com or follow them on Facebook @haysorganservice.