St Marks Church Cardiff Aspire to a Makin Thirlmere 2-36T organ

Following a careful consideration of all the options open to them the congregation and officers at St Marks Church in Gabalfa, Cardiff decided that a Makin Thirlmere 2-36T instrument was their organ of choice to replace the ageing and failing Nicholson six-rank extension organ. Originally built in 1968 in the rotunda style of building and a brutalist pipework façade, all the pipework remains in place. 
 
Church Warden, Mr Barney Hawthorne worked with ChurchOrganWorld Organ Consultant Dr Matthew Pearson honing details which really made the organ their own, for example with reeds being engraved in red on the console with couplers in blue. There was even some discussion about changing the mixture compositions (Great 15.19.22 and Swell 19.22.26) to include a 17th rank, i.e. a tierce mixture which were very in vogue some years ago. Tastes have changed since those days, and after some discussion it was decided not to do so, using octave and quint ranks only. Of course, since the Thirlmere has a separate diapason-based 17th on the Great, this could always be added as required to stop combinations. 
 
Originally designed by Professor Ian Tracey and Dr Keith Harrington, the Thirlmere 2-36T is part of a new line up of Makin instruments which include the Rydal 2-25, Windermere 3-53 and Derwent 4-68 instruments which organists aspire to own and play. These are all revolutionary instruments setting new standards in digital English organ tonal design. Utilising the best resolution live organ samples with the GlobalOrganGroup DSCore hardware and software platform, incredible flexibility and longevity is simply built into these instruments.