The Lancashire-based family firm specialise in the manufacture, installation and refurbishment of pipe organs for the church market. The company has a long history of building and installing traditional pipe organs, but has also more recently started to specialise in the field of hybrid and pipeless organs. This is where modern sampling technologies are brought to bear to allow for full-sounding organ installations in situations where there is either insufficient space or funds for a full-scale pipe organ, often in combination with some pipe sections for the instrument (hence, hybrid).
Of course, this requires some form of speaker installation in order to deliver the audio output of the digital recordings and that's where Tannoy's Di series comes in. Sixsmith Organ Builders recently commissioned 12 x Di8 DC loudspeakers for use in their latest hybrid organ installation at St Paul's Church in Mill Hill, North London. Featuring an 8" Dual Concentric point source drive unit, the Di8 DC delivers an acoustic performance of outstanding clarity, definition and detail with the added benefit that the speaker can be mounted in either vertical or horizontal orientations on walls or ceilings with no compromise to performance - critical for this application where they often need to fit into small and unconventional spaces behind the existing organ works.
Sixsmiths have been using loudspeakers like this for about 15 years, but only recently made the switch to Tannoy, due to their excellent reliability as Andrew Sixsmith explained: "We used to use another very well known manufacturer's units but were unhappy about their longevity. Tannoy's Di8 DCs are the best available - a top quality product as we require 'fit and forget' level of service from our finished installation."
When pressed on the issue of realistic sound quality and on the reaction of organists to this modern solution Andrew told us, "After spending time playing these hybrid systems, many are frustrated by the fact that they were unable to tell what stops were real pipe and what stops were being generated by the pipeless technology, the vast majority - all in all very impressed!"
(Lee Baldock)
