Born in Dayton, Ohio, Brombaugh 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 and Cornell University 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 and Charles Fisk and then served as a journeyman 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 the adjacent Netherlands. In June 1968, he established his own firm, John Brombaugh & Co., in the farmlands west of Germantown, Ohio, his hometown; this sole proprietorship eventually became a partnership including George Taylor, John Boody, Herman Greunke, and others. In 1977, the partnership dissolved in a friendly way when Brombaugh moved his firm to Eugene, Oregon under the new name, John Brombaugh & Associates, Inc., that continued until completing its final instrument in summer 2005. He built 66 organs that are located in 23 states, Canada, Sweden, and Japan, and was a teacher to many upcoming younger builders, including Bruce Shull, Michael Bigelow, Charles Ruggles, Paul Fritts, Munetaka Yokota, Bruce Fowkes, Trent Buhr, Karl Nelson, David Petty, and Aaron Reichert. A grant from the Ford Foundation in spring 1971 enabled Brombaugh to do intense study of about 100 historic organs in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, and he has continued his studies at all possible times since.
Organ building style
The majority of Brombaugh organs are tuned in a "Well temperament". This enables them to play music composed in any key but, compared with Equal Temperament, favors the central keys used in most organ literature of all periods. Since its introduction in 1978, the has become Brombaugh's standard tuning, though several of his organs are tuned in 1/4 Syntonic commaMeantone where their primary intention is for historically oriented performance of the organ literature older than that of Johann Sebastian Bach's. Many of his easily movable small positives have transposition capabilities to facilitate their playability at different pitches; these are his only instruments tuned in Equal Temperament. Although he has been interested to recover and use many of the lost concepts from the ancient organ-builders, he also considers himself a builder of this time who is amenable to the use of the best current construction methods and the use of ideas necessary for the convenience required by organists of our time. For example, his Opus 35 - an organ of 3,250 pipes, 3 manuals and pedal with 46 stops that was dedicated on Pentecost 2001 at the First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois - is a synthesis of historical and modern techniques. Among John Brombaugh's contributions to modern organ-building are:
