RE:What's a STRAIGHT organ

>>>
>
> Without going into any controversy about the merits of "unification" in a
> pipe organ, it is obvious that this principle cannot be used to reduce
the
> number of pipes which would be necessary to control the tone quality by
> harmonic pipes alone, for in the common case where the same frequency
> reappears twice as a harmonic of different order of two notes in one
chord,
> the single pipe would have to be made to blow twice as hard.  This is
> obviously impossible because the pipe must either be blown the same way
or > not blown at all.

>  Much else deleted....

I'll try this one (leaving the obvious punch lines to those more witty).

On a pipe organ the blower is running at full blast all the time.  What
makes the organ louder or softer is adding/removing stops, which
adds/removes pipes in the mix (some installations also have louvers to
control how much sound leaves the pipe chambers).  In the statement above,
it correctly details the difficulty in producing more "tone" when the same
harmonic is required more than once.  To do this you would have to a set of
pipes for each stop for each note!
<<<

In pipe organ terminology, we are talking about the number of 'stops'
versus the number of 'ranks'.  A rank is one complete set of pipes,
normally used to produce a single tone color at a single designated pitch
(8', 4', etc).  An organ that has more stops than ranks makes up the
difference by 'borrowing' a rank and using it on more than one stop,
usually at a different pitch on a different clavier, hence the condition
talked about above.  Baroque tracker organs that used mechanical key
linkage did not use this technique, so I guess you could call them
'straight' (as opposed to borrowed) organs also.