Haskell Basses

In 1910 William E. Haskell of the Estey Organ Company took out a number of
patents on methods for lowering the pitch of an organ pipe without
substantially increasing its length. These methods, which came to be known
as Haskelling, involved placing a tube, closed at one end, inside or outside
the body of an open or stopped organ pipe. Haskell developed several
variations on this theme, some of which are illustrated in the simplified
drawings below.

Figure A shows the most common form of Haskelling. An open metal (or
sometimes wooden) pipe of normal scale a is modified by the insertion of a
cylindrical metal tube b, closed at the top and open at the bottom.
According to Haskell, the inside cross-section of the inner tube must be
exactly half that of the outer pipe; this translates to a diameter for the inner
tube that is 0.707 times the diameter of the outer pipe. Some examples,
however, reportedly vary from this ratio. The inner tube extends above the
main body by 1/4 to 1/3 of its length. These pipes are tuned in one of two
ways:
A tuning sleeve is fitted to the bottom end of the inner tube, to which is
soldered a rod which extends past the top of the pipe to provide a handle for
moving the sleeve.
The inner tube is fastened to a tuning sleeve fitted to the top of the outer
pipe, allowing the inner tube to be moved up and down along with the
tuning sleeve.

Figure B shows an open pipe a which has been modified by the addition of a
tube c on the outside of the pipe, rather than the inside. This form of
construction was reportedly only used for Haskell's reedless Clarinet.

Figure C shows a stopped pipe a which has been modified by the insertion of
a tube d open at the top and closed at the bottom. Using this construction,
16' tone can be produced from a pipe little more than 4' in length. It is not
clear, however, if any stops of this form were ever actually built.

Figure D shows how two inner tubes, one inside the other, can be used to
lower the pitch even further. Haskell maintained that the pitch corresponded
to the sum of the lengths of the outer pipe and the two inner tubes.

The drawings below, reproduced from Bonavia-Hunt, show two more forms
of Haskelling, one in a flue pipe made entirely of wood, the other in a reed
pipe. Such reed pipes are rare.

Haskell basses have been used for 8', 16' and 32' octaves, and are most
successful in the lower pitches. They can be difficult to voice, which
probably accounts for the wide variation in opinion over their effectiveness.
Haskell basses have more harmonic development and less fundamental
than normal pipes, making them best suited for string tone. An added
benefit is their quickness of speech, which can make them tonally more
desirable than normal pipes for the bottom octaves of 16' and 32' strings,
which have a tendency to be slow of speech.

Haskell's patents have long since expired, and many other builders have
used his ideas. There are rumors of 18th century Spanish organs having
used these types of pipes, and Adlung (1768) attributed such a thing to one
Nicholas Bach around 1750. Some builders have used this approach to
reduce the length of faade pipes for visual purposes, using short Haskell
tubes to lower the pitch by a relatively small amount.