The Biggest Musical Instrument on Earth (Bet on Black)

We all want the biggest and the baddest. Well, if we don’t want those things, we want to know what they are. What’s the biggest chili cheese dog in the Midwest? Who knows, and if the judges are hungry enough, it won’t be the biggest for long.

But in Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, there sits the largest pipe organ in the world. No, let’s super-size that; the largest musical instrument on earth.

Thanks to Midmer-Losh Inc. of Merrick, Long Island, AC is the proud new owner of a baby behemoth. This thing has 33,000 tubes, which is one tube for every pizza place in New York City that claims to have the most authentic New York pie. And maybe that would be enough to blast bragging right all across the boardwalk, but it’s not so simple.

See, the biggest pipe organ can’t just be measured in pipes. I could glue 50,000 pipes to the old Wurlitzer in my church, but all I’d have is a church too packed for parishoners. Because when they design pipe organs, looks matter, and some of the pipes are just decoration.

How do you measure? Put the rulers down. There are other ways, but none of them are perfect, and it’s way beyond the scope of you reading this waiting for the doctor, or for your next Mojito. But I’ll do my best.

So this is easy; it has seven keyboards. Most of any pipe organ. And less easy, it has 1,200 stopping points, which is basically any part of the organ where wind can be started or stopped. And along the lines of less easy, we have switches, which are basically all the doo-dads on the organ that aren’t keys. This think has a ton of them, as you’ll see. Yeah, try counting that.

This thing is six times louder than any other organ, and everybody from Atlantic City to Albany was quiet, we might just hear it.

And that is the biggest pipe organ, biggest and most powerful musical instrument on earth. In Atlantic City. Because you’d never go there to do anything except check out this musical wonder.

Always bet on black, and tip your organist.

Here’s Peter Richard Conte playing.