Wicks Organ Company
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The Wicks Organ Company is based in the Illinois town of Highland. The company builds and repairs organs, as well as restores existing organs. There are several thousand Wicks organs in service since being produced at the Wicks factory.
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[edit] History
The Wicks Organ company was founded in the early 1900s in a small jewelry and watch making store in Highland. The local priest had asked John Wick to study organ so that he could become the church organist. After some time had passed, the parish decided that they wanted a pipe organ to replace the aging reed organ.
John Wick, along with his brothers Louis and Adolph, combined their skills in watch making, cabinet making, and jewelry to create a small mechanical action organ for the church. This small 5 stop instrument built in 1895, turned out to be quite successful.
Before long, others had heard of this organ, and wanted the Wick brothers to build organs for them. In 1906, the three brothers incorporated the Wicks Organ Company. They initially produced organs for homes and churches in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri. After a while, nearly every state in the union had a Wicks organ.
Initially, the company produced mechanical action instruments. When electricity became popular, electric actions and blowers soon became available. While the company experimented with electro-pneumatic actions, they felt that because of the difficulties of these types of actions to try building organs built with pure electric actions.
In 1914, Wicks perfected the electric action. Called Direct Electric, it helped to remedy some of the shortcomings of electro-pneumatic actions. The company patented the device in 1922. In 1929 they patented an improved version.
Over the years, Wicks organs have proved to be quite durable. Opus #1, on display at the Wicks shop, is still working, as are many of the early instruments built by the company.
The company has built a large number of organs. Wicks has built organs with a wide variety of sizes. The company has built a number of smaller instruments, such as a small organ in the chapel near the Daniel Boone homestead west of St. Louis, Missouri. The company has built larger instruments as well. First Baptist Church in Memphis has an 82 rank organ, and Morehouse College in Atlanta has 92 ranks.
Wicks has also helped to restore a number of well known organs as well. It restored and enlarged the 118 rank Kilgen/Möller instrument at the Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis the King in Saint Louis, Missouri. They also rebuilt the action of the Aeolian-Skinner organ located in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Wicks Organ Company is a non-union shop. There is no payscale for employee wages and benefits are partial. The company went through major changes in management during the last few years.
[edit] DIRECT-ELECTRIC action
Prior to 1914, the valve action of pipe organs was limited to mechanical, pneumatic, or electro-pneumatic. As electricity was becoming more common in churches and households, Wick's founder John F. Wick with the assistance of a Dr. Katz from the University of Illinois developed a solenoid action. Requiring 15 volts of DC current, the electro-magnetic action operated a single moving armature. The small size, single moving part, and lack of perishable leather in the individual units made them more durable than the alternatives. The action is still proving itself today. The first modern style units installed in St. Mary's Church in Union City, Indiana have been working for more than 80 years. Wick's maintains a trademark on the name "DIRECT-ELECTRIC". Generically the action is referred to as electro-mechanical.
Improvements to DIRECT-ELECTRIC's design over the years include upgrading the return spring from a flat spring to a coil spring, shortening the armature, lowering the valve height and increasing the pallet thickness, removal of a wooden "stop", addition of the flux bracket to increase the unit's power, the addition of diodes to aid in closing of the valve, changing the paper coating to shrink-wrap plastic, double-coil high-pressure units, and the development of a special "bounceless" unit for use on reeds.
[edit] Wicks Scholarship
The Wicks Organ Company provides a scholarship at the American Guild of Organists. Since 2005, the scholarship is permanently endowed and will be available to qualified organists through the Pipe Organ Encounters. The scholarship was made available by Arthur J. Meier Jr. in memory of Martin M. Wick, who was President of the Wicks Organ Company for more than 60 years.
