The Iberian organ followed the Italian tradition, but, later, many reeds were added, most notably the trompetas reales (“royal trumpets”) and other horizontal (en chamada) reeds arrayed in fanlike projections from highly ornamental cases. These reeds were on extremely low wind pressure and achieved amazingly full sounds that filled the huge edifices.

Like their Italian counterparts, Spanish and Portuguese organs had only a few rudimentary pedals. The manuals, however, were divided, with keys up to middle C controlled by a draw knob to the left and keys up from C♯ by a draw knob to the right. This enabled the playing of a solo voice against an accompaniment on the same manual. A unique feature of Iberian churches was the presence of several separate and distinct instruments in one building, enabling interesting uses of antiphony, or contrasting masses of sound.

Germany

From 1500 to 1800 Germany led the world in organ building and the composition of organ music. The organ builders reached the peak of their achievement about 1700 in the work of Arp Schnitger. Schnitger made organs with four manuals, pedals, and as many as 60 speaking stops, but he made some instruments with fewer than 30 speaking stops that are capable of dealing with the whole pre-Romantic repertoire. His was the organ of the high Baroque; but his countrymen Andreas and Gottfried Silbermann were equally the masters of the slightly later, more sophisticated style of the mid-18th century.

Seventeenth- and 18th-century German organs were usually constructed on Werk-principle lines: each department of the instrument, or Werk, was separately cased, the Hauptwerk (main manual) in front of and above the player, with the pedals at each side and the Rückpositiv (auxiliary manual) behind on the gallery railing. Each department, including the pedal, had its own principal chorus, complete up to at least one mixture. All departments were roughly equal in power but varied in pitch, having, respectively, a 16-foot, 8-foot, and 4-foot preponderance (and 32-foot and 2-foot as well in larger instruments). Each manual department had a set of flutes and mutations that could be combined in a variety of ways to provide accompaniment and melody or the balanced but contrasting tone qualities essential for duet and trio passages. Although the pedal department consisted mainly of its principal chorus, it could be coloured for solo and obbligato passages by 2-foot flute and reed stops. The reeds were not much louder than the flue stops, and the pedal 16-foot and 8-foot reeds were frequently drawn with the principal chorus for improved definition. When used in this way, they by no means caused the pedal to overwhelm the Hauptwerk. Such an instrument could deal with the requirements of all 15th- through 18th-century organ music, although its limited supply of manual reeds placed it at some disadvantage in French music of the period.

France

As far as the manual departments are concerned, French organs differed little from the German type, but the principal choruses were generally larger in scale. The separate, large-scaled Tierce (1 3/5-foot) was also universal, and there were many cornet stops. These mixture stops consisted of five pipes to each note: a stopped unison (8-foot) and large-scale open 4-foot, 2 2/3-foot, 3-foot, and 1 3/5-foot. They extended only from middle C upward and were largely melodic in use. They were never drawn with the principal chorus (Plein Jeu) but generally were used with the reed chorus (Grand Jeu). Apart from this, the Plein Jeu, Grand Jeu, and Jeux de Mutation were seldom or never intermixed in French music.

The pedal department of the French organ prior to 1700 was regarded largely as a sort of solo section that consisted usually of only 8- and 4-foot flutes and 8- and 4-foot trumpets. Only in the largest 18th-century French organs were 16-foot stops included, although there were often as many as three on the Grand Orgue (the manual analogous to the German Hauptwerk and the English Great Organ). When French organs had more than two manuals (Grand Orgue and Positif), the others (Récit and Écho) were usually of short compass; but if, as sometimes, there was a fifth manual, it was a Clavier de Bombardes, consisting of 16-, 8-, and 4-foot trumpets and a cornet. Unlike its German counterpart, the main case housed all divisions except the Positif, which was in its usual location on the gallery railing.

French organs were notable for their reeds, and the highly stylized French music of the 17th and 18th centuries calls for their frequent use. Surviving specimens in good order are rare; but unaltered, late 18th-century, four-manual organs survive at Poitiers cathedral (by the noted builder François-Henri Clicquot) and at Saint-Maximin, Provence (by Jean-Esprit Isnard).

Great Britain

Few British organs before the Commonwealth (1649–60) had two manuals, and none had pedals. Mixtures and reeds seem to have been unknown, and mutations were restricted to a single 12th.

After 1660 a new school rapidly grew up, and, although the two principal builders had both been abroad during the Commonwealth (Bernard Smith in Germany or Holland and Renatus Harris in France), their British work owed little to foreign influence. Only the Great Organ had a complete diapason chorus, and the Choir, or Chayre, organ usually extended upward only to a single two-foot. Almost every organ had a cornet, and the reeds in common use were trumpet, vox humana, and cremona, or krummhorn, with half-length, cylindrical resonators. There were no pedals, but the manual compass almost invariably extended to the third G below middle C. If there was a third manual, it consisted of a short-compass echo department in which all the pipes were shut up in a box to produce the echo effect. In 1712 the builder Abraham Jordan first fitted the echo box with shutters that were controlled by a pedal at the console; this arrangement produced what Jordan described as the swelling organ, but it was not to reach its full development until 150 years later; no 18th-century organ music demands a swell box. There are hardly any surviving examples of British instruments of this period in original condition.