John Brombaugh

John Brombaugh
Brombaugh testing an organ pipe, 16 June 2011
Born	(1937-03-01) March 1, 1937 (age 80) Dayton, Ohio
Alma mater	University of Cincinnati

John Brombaugh (born March 1, 1937) is an American master pipe organ builder known for his historically oriented tracker action pipe organs.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Brombaugh (related to the Brumbaugh families) first heard a Hammond organ while in the fourth grade and was “mesmerized” by the combination of organ and electronics, a combination that would shape his career. Brombaugh has degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati (EE, 1960) and Cornell University (MS-EE, 1963) specializing in the field of acoustics, in particular musical acoustics.

After college graduation, Brombaugh worked as a development engineer for the Baldwin Piano Company. His charge “was to develop a method to produce electronic chiff and to design an artificial reverberation system.” For the former, he extensively studied the construction of organ pipes, while the latter included ideas pioneered in the Hammond organ. Brombaugh also secured seven patents with the Baldwin Organ Company.

As a lifelong lover of classical music, especially as he heard ancient European organs on recordings - e.g. E. Power Biggs' The Art of the Organ and Helmut Walcha's of J.S. Bach's music on the Schnitger organ in Cappel, he became an apprentice under the two leading American tracker action pipe organ builders, Fritz Noack (1964–1966) and Charles Fisk (1966–1967) and then served as a journeyman (Geselle) with the Rudolph von Beckerath firm in Hamburg in 1967–68 to complete his training, especially in making reed pipes. While in Hamburg, Brombaugh used every opportunity to study the many historic organs in northwest Germany and adjacent Netherlands.