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Organ Constructors' Society meeting yesterday

Started by David Pinnegar, April 15, 2012, 12:30:13 PM

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David Pinnegar

Hi!

Sadly I was unable to attend in the morning . . . and I missed a talk by Don Bray about making moulds and moulded parts from epoxy for stop tabs and ornamental details but later saw some of his demonstration items which he had produced to good effect. Don has replicated a Wurlitzer console having found that the original which he had bought would have gone through the floorboards and been an unwelcome addition to the furnishing of the flat below . . . so he set about construction of an exact weight-reduced replica.

Roger Lucas described and showed us a stop control and capture system that he had developed with a version specifically for pipe organs, opto isolated on all inputs, so as to be resistant to electrical interference of spikes on conventional electric pipe actions. Another version without opto isolation is being developed for Society use and I believe may be a complete organ control system.

Keith Tomkinson showed us a computer he had put together for under £200 for the hardware to run Hauptwerk 1.2 and the St Anne's Moseley sample set for use on a Norwich organ console, adapting samples for the Norwich specification.

Don Bray showed a film of the last four visits of the South East Region. This included in the background a member playing Widor 5 on the instrument at Hammerwood Park which, if the organist has not had the opportunity to hand pick stops can, and did in the film, have an electronic sounding edge. This may be on account of the Great Mixture of the original Makin which has since been revoiced. The visit included a demonstration of Hauptwerk and using interesting speakers that produce very real sounds. There was a visit to the Uckfield National Golf Course Wurlitzer, which sounded superb and the film showed a good view of the pipework. Another visit was to Don Bray's instrument which, running Miditzer, sounded very good. Finally there was a visit to a free-phase analogue instrument at Guildford on which whilst solo stops can leave something to be desired, the ensemble well recorded on Widor 6 sounded absolutely superb.

Finally Trevor Hawkins showed slides of a pipe instrument installation at a barn in Woking where one of his console multiplex electronic systems is in use for a remote pipe console.

It's in this way that the (E)OCS is a truly universal society for all interested in organ construction, whether of pipes, electronics or software, particularly in relation to electronic control systems being common to all.

Best wishes

David P

revtonynewnham

Hi

Sorry to have missed it.  Sounds like a good session.

Every Blessing

Tony

AnOrganCornucopia

I'd be very interested to hear of the pipe organ installation near Woking - what is it?

I shall, I hope, be down for the Wurlitzer's opening gig on Saturday - I hope to see you there, David. What you heard was in a very small part the fruit of my labours the previous day, assisting Peter Hammond in fixing various little problems. It should, hopefully, be in full health come Saturday, but a few things (including a dead shutter on the right hand chamber) remained to be fixed by other parties.

Meanwhile, with such interest being shown now in theatre organs by members of this forum, what chance I wonder of a large pipeless theatre organ appearing in a late eighteenth-century manor house in the North-East corner of Sussex?  ;D