Wicks Control-System Generations and Relay Replacement Decisions

The relay is the switching that carries the organist’s choices from the console to the right pipe valves. The Wicks glossary, as published on the company’s website on September 1, 2026, defines relays as ‘switching devices that direct the organist’s movements at the console to the appropriate pallets, so that pipes will sound which correspond to the stops and keys activated’, and defines couplers as the controls that connect the keyboards so that stops drawn on one division sound while another is played. In house terms the pallet is the pipe valve, and the relay is what decides which valves receive current when a key goes down with a given set of stops and couplers drawn.

That definition places the relay between the console and the windchest rather than inside either. Keys, stop controls and pistons live in the console; action magnets and pipe valves live in the chest; the relay sits in the path between them and can be replaced without replacing either. A proposal to change the relay and a proposal to change the console are therefore two decisions, even when a contractor bundles them, and the documented Wicks projects further down this page include both outcomes.

In an electro-mechanical windchest the relay does the work a stop action would otherwise do inside the chest. A 1998 tutorial by James H. Cook, Professor of Organ and Music History at Birmingham-Southern College, hosted by the Organ Historical Society, describes the characteristic feature of the electro-mechanical chests it abbreviates DE or EM as the absence of a stop action within the chest: a series of electrical relays performs that work instead, and the connection between both key and stop control and the chest is an electrical cable. The tutorial names the Direct Electric Action built by the Wicks Organ Company as the most common example and notes that other builders use a similar system.

The stop control in the console is a separate mechanism again. A theatre-organ reference describes a direct-electric stop action as a stop unit of its own, moved by the combination memory and carrying a switch that signals the relay when the stop is on, distinct from the chest action that opens the pipe valve. A fault or a proposal can therefore concern the stop unit in the console, the relay between, or the chest action, and the three are not interchangeable.

DIRECT-ELECTRIC names the switching as well as the valve. In the company’s glossary, as published on August 31, 2026, the entry describes an all-electric system for controlling the organ that ‘includes patented electro-magnetic pipe valves in the chests and the entire switching system that routes the electrical impulses from the keys to the proper valves’. In the company’s own usage the term therefore covers the whole path from key to pipe valve, not the chest valve alone, so it names the switching as much as the chest valve wherever it appears on a nameplate or in paperwork. The valve, the action magnet and the comparison with electro-pneumatic action are explained at Wicks DIRECT-ELECTRIC Action: Meaning, Boundaries, and Comparison.

The earlier generation performs keying, coupling and stop selection with three separate sets of hardware. A 2014 practitioner article on electromechanical keying describes them: key contacts perform the keying; coupler relays, which are ganged switches operated by solenoids or pneumatic motors, perform the coupling; and stop switches, also called ladder switches, select which relay contacts are live. Each set has moving contacts, and in this generation the key contact itself carries the current the action takes. What that layer looks like in a Wicks console, how it ages and what its typical faults are belongs to Key Contacts, Rectifiers and Wiring in Wicks Organs.

The later generation moves the switching into transistors and leaves the key contact carrying a signal rather than a load. The same practitioner’s history of electric actions dates solid-state switching in organs to about 1960 and explains that transistors reduced the current a key contact had to carry from roughly 100 milliamps to roughly 1 milliamp, which eliminated sparking at the contacts. A published chronology from the control-system manufacturer Organ Works / Classic Organ Works labels 1948 as the beginning of a transistor era; that is the manufacturer’s own periodization and is not evidence that transistors were installed in pipe organs in 1948, so the two dates are different kinds of claim and neither is a date for any Wicks instrument.

Diode keying, which belongs to this generation, changed the wiring rule as well: because one key contact can drive many diodes in parallel without the circuits they feed interacting, the same author explains, a single harness of typically 61 wires per keyboard serves regardless of how large or complicated the organ is. The company now describes the switches in modern organs as transistorized ‘so there are no contacts and no moving parts’, which is the form its current solid-state material takes.

Solid-state switching and combination actions reached Wicks production during the 1960s and 1970s. The profile of John E. Sperling, the company’s tonal director emeritus, published in The Diapason in 2005, lists their introduction among the changes the company made in those two decades. That places a technology boundary inside the surviving Wicks population: instruments from before it left the factory with electromechanical switching, and instruments from after it with solid-state switching, with the profile giving a period rather than an opus number or a year.

The boundary describes how an instrument left the factory, not what is in it now. A relay replaced in a rebuild belongs to the year of the rebuild, and the Portland instrument described below has carried two successive aftermarket relays in a 1957 organ. Placing an instrument on either side of the line starts from its opus number and date, which is the subject of Identifying and Dating Wicks Organs, Companies, and Opus Suffixes, and from whatever record of later work survives, which is the subject of Wicks Factory Records and Opus Documentation.

Opto-Key is the company’s name for its own key-contacting system. On its solid-state switching page, as read on September 1, 2026, Wicks states that it uses a proprietary Opto-Key system which ‘allows for instantaneous and silent key contacting, without the worry of broken or dirty contacts’. That is the company’s claim for its product, and the page gives no more than that: no date of introduction, no statement of which instruments carry it and no description of the device beyond the sentence quoted. An owner who meets the term in a proposal or on a stop list has the whole of the published definition in that sentence.

For rebuilds the company lists a solid state relay and a set of console additions. As of September 1, 2026, its page states that adding a solid state relay can extend an organ’s life, reduce bulky wiring and remove noisy mechanical parts, and that it can add combination pistons, multiple memory levels for the combination action, moving drawknobs and stopkeys, a MIDI interface, MIDI sequencer control and a piston sequencer. The page names no third-party supplier for any of this equipment, so it does not say whether the relay offered is built by the company or bought in, and the claims about life, wiring and noise are the company’s own characterizations rather than measured results.

The combination problem was being addressed at Wicks Pipe Organ Co. by 1928. United States Patent 1,771,841, ‘Setter mechanism for stop combinations of organs’, was filed on May 28, 1928, granted on July 29, 1930 to Eugene J. Buchheim and assigned to Wicks Pipe Organ Co. It describes an electrically operated setter-bar unit with one electromagnet and pivoting armature per stop key, and a swingable setter rod that mechanically locks the selected armature positions when a combination piston is pressed while the desired stop keys are drawn.

Its architecture separates ‘operating units’, active during normal playing of the piston, from ‘setter units’, active only while a new combination is being captured, so that setting a piston does not interfere with stops already sounding through normal play. A patent describes an intended design, not what was actually built or shipped or for how long, so the document shows when and how the firm approached the setter and not what is inside any particular console. The patents on the action itself are covered at Wicks Direct-Electric Patents.

Relays and combination actions from outside the builder have been fitted to Wicks organs in documented projects. Buzard Pipe Organ Builders records that a 1975 Wicks, Opus 5523, received a new solid state relay and combination action in work completed in 2012. The company’s own project page for Opus 2575, a 1944 Wicks, records a new Syndyne relay system in work completed in 2023. Rose City Organ Builders’ account of a 1957 Wicks at First United Methodist Church in Portland, Oregon records a solid state relay by K & S Electronics fitted in 1983 and a Uniflex computerized relay fitted in a 2007 rebuild, so that one instrument has carried three switching generations: the original, a 1983 solid-state relay and a 2007 computerized one.

The company’s own project list records a Wicks control system replaced by another firm. As of September 1, 2026, its Recent Projects page states that the control system of Wicks Opus 4410 at Hope Lutheran Church, Highland, Illinois was replaced by Walker Technical Company, with the work recorded as completed in September 2023. The same list records the reverse relationship: on an M. P. Moller instrument, Opus 4078 of 1924, at Blue Mound United Methodist Church, Wicks installed a complete new control system for the entire instrument and rewired all chests, replacing mechanical components, with no supplier named and no completion date given on that page. A control system on a Wicks organ may therefore be another firm’s work, and a Wicks control system may sit in another builder’s organ; the nameplate does not settle which.

A 1981 record documents a Wicks relay going transistorized together with a completely new console. The Organ Historical Society Pipe Organ Database entry for the Wicks instrument at Friends Church in Winchester, Indiana, dated 1981, quotes a contemporary newspaper account that ‘the relays have become completely transistorized, which means there will be no moving parts to the main relay box’, a box that a named Wicks representative called the instrument’s ‘electronic heart’. Here the relay and the console changed together, which is the other outcome the definition in the first section allows.

When a console does leave an instrument, it does not lose its identity. The company’s parts listings, as published on August 31, 2026, identify used consoles by opus number and year, for example two consoles offered as ‘Wicks 2 Manual & Pedal w/ Bench – Opus 5930 (1983)’ and ‘Opus 6001 (1984)’, so a console found detached from its organ, or one that has been replaced and stored, may still carry a traceable opus identity.

A conversion adds a list of functions that can be written down. On the company’s solid-state switching page the additions are intra-manual couplers, a transposer, additional combination pistons, multiple memory levels, moving drawknobs and stopkeys, a MIDI interface and sequencer control, a piston sequencer, and combination and power locks. Those are functions of the console and the switching layer, and each is an item the owner can weigh individually rather than a package that arrives with the relay. Moving drawknobs and stopkeys are the exception to treat carefully, because they are a mechanical addition to the console rather than an electronic one and have physical consequences for an original jamb.

The aftermarket equipment has generations of its own. One combination-action manufacturer’s published manual archive distinguishes a First Generation ‘Black Box’ Duo Set, a Modular Duo Set that supports reversible controls and capacitor memory backup, a Single Board Duo Set with revisions through Rev H, and a separate MSP-1000 line. A manual archive is evidence of what has been supported, not of what remains in production, and the point for an owner is that a solid-state system already in the console has an age and a generation of its own, just as the original switching did.

A thorough conversion removes far more than the relay box. One firm, Fabry, Inc., states in its console article that it replaces the entire DC controlling system including both console and chamber relay systems, and lists among the replaced items the piston buttons, toe studs, expression and crescendo shoes, the manual and pedal contacts with mechanical moving parts, the wood surfaces for drawknob and tablet assemblies, the pedal key tops and the pedal key contact rail. That removal is extensive and largely irreversible, and it is the trade an owner is actually being asked to make when a proposal is written that way.

Not every firm describes the work that way. Leek Pipe Organ Company describes console restoration as keeping and repairing the original console fabric, and describes solid-state technology as modernizing outdated controls while maintaining original aesthetics, working to the objectives and standards of the American Institute of Organbuilders and the Organ Historical Society. Both are current published positions of the firms that hold them, not a consensus, and a proposal should say which of the two it is.

Two professional bodies address a change of this kind directly. The American Theatre Organ Society, in guidelines written for theatre organs and described by it as based on Organ Historical Society guidelines, classifies ‘Replacement of the stop actions, combination action, or relay system’ as a major alteration rather than ordinary repair. The same guidelines provide that where solid-state combination actions or relay systems are necessary to meet an installation’s requirements, they must be designed and installed to equal the aesthetic appearance, feel and functionality of the original console controls, and they contemplate leaving original equipment such as setter boards installed for historic purposes while carefully disconnected for practicality.

The Organ Historical Society’s guidelines adopted in 2008 state that whenever possible treatments should be additive rather than subtractive, adding to an incomplete component rather than replacing it entirely. Whether a particular Wicks action should be kept, added to or replaced is the decision made at Preserving Versus Replacing Original Wicks Action, and this page does not make it.

A modern control system need not be cut into an original console. The manufacturer Peterson states of one of its control systems that the design ‘permits mounting in a pull-out drawer for cases where the historic appearance of an older console must be preserved’, so the new system’s display and controls can live in a drawer while the original jambs and console face keep their appearance. That is one manufacturer’s statement about one of its products, current on September 1, 2026, not a rule about what any conversion does, and it is the kind of provision an owner with a historic console can ask a proposal to address.

Wicks paperwork uses a particular console vocabulary, and a proposal reads more easily once its words are fixed. The company’s glossary, as published on August 31, 2026, uses stop key, tilting tablet, tablet board, side jambs, drawknob, thumb pistons, toe pistons, general pistons, reversibles and junction board, and the same words recur in its project descriptions. A drawknob and a stopkey are two types of console control for turning on stops or couplers: the drawknob functions like the original mechanical pull control, a knob on the end of a shaft pulled to turn the stop on and pushed to turn it off, and the stopkey moves up and down. That pull-and-push gesture survives on electric-action consoles where the knob no longer moves any mechanical trace.

A tilting tablet is a rocker switch for turning on stops or couplers, on when pushed in at the bottom and off when pushed in at the top by the glossary’s convention, which should be confirmed on an unfamiliar console rather than assumed. The ‘moving drawknobs and stopkeys’ on the rebuild menu refer to these controls.

The piston vocabulary is the company’s too. Thumb pistons, toe pistons, general pistons and reversibles all appear in the glossary and in the project descriptions, and so does the Sforzando, also called Tutti, which the glossary defines as a quick way to bring on full organ without upsetting the stops drawn in the usual way. Because the drawn stops are not disturbed, the visible stop controls do not show what the sforzando has added. The junction board belongs to the wiring layer and is explained at Key Contacts, Rectifiers and Wiring in Wicks Organs.

The Wicks CM-100 is a digital sound module, not a relay and not a combination action. Its manual, which carries a 2005 copyright and is hosted by Classic Organ Works, describes a Wicks/Viscount digital pipe organ sound module using physical modeling, with 176 pre-programmed voices and 64 voice memories in eight banks of eight. A CM-100 in a Wicks console generates digital voices; it does not route keys and stops to the pipe valves and does not store combinations, so its presence says nothing about which switching generation the organ has.

United States Patent 3,379,085 is not a Wicks patent. ‘Operational circuitry for pipe organs’, filed in 1965 and granted in 1968, describes transistor key-and-stop switching with diodes in series with the chest magnets to block sneak circuits, and it is invented by and assigned to Howard A. Burton. It surfaces in searches about Wicks direct-electric switching because its subject overlaps the second generation described above, and the patent states that its circuits apply to both direct-electric and electro-pneumatic pipe organs, but nothing in it connects it to the company. The patents that are Wicks patents are set out at Wicks Direct-Electric Patents.

A relay proposal is easier to judge once three things are written down about the instrument as it stands: its opus number and year, whether the switching in it is the original generation or a later replacement, and what the proposal says it will remove. The opus number and year, established the way Identifying and Dating Wicks Organs, Companies, and Opus Suffixes describes, tell you which side of the 1960s and 1970s boundary the instrument was built on; a documented later relay, like the 1983 and 2007 relays in the Portland instrument, places the switching in a different generation from the organ; and a proposal written the way Fabry describes its work names a very different scope from one written the way Leek describes its work, even when both are called a solid-state conversion.

Where the paperwork is missing, Wicks Factory Records and Opus Documentation describes what survives and where to ask, and the decision the record then supports is the one made at Preserving Versus Replacing Original Wicks Action.