Interesting pipe/electronic hybrid on eBay

[NonPlayingAnorak]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Two-manuals-and-pedals-half-pipe-half-electronic-organ-/180594170948?pt=UK_MusicalInstr_Keyboard_RL&hash=item2a0c405c44

Built by Rodgers in the 1970s, now being replaced by a proper tracker-action pipe organ. Looks alright to me. Could be useful for someone.

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

Thanks for drawing this one to attention. A very interesting instrument and concept and really brilliant for practice, teaching or a small space.

However, any purchaser should
1. hear it - it will be analogue technology and sometimes, as that 1960s Allen, they can be brilliant but at other times less so or even worse
2. investigate what components are used and at least ensure that it uses silicon rather than germanium transistors

It may be for sale as a result of someone making realistic comments about the reality of 40 year old electronics . . . but it could be a good project for a rebuild in modern technology.

Best wishes

David P

[NonPlayingAnorak]

Or, quite simply, you could re-use the pipework in an all-pipe organ and burn the rest  ;D

[dragonser]

Hi,
or sell / give the electronics to an unsuspecting EOCS member !
if it is 1970's electronics then it may use Silicon transistors.
though the mention of a detune control suggests it may use divider ics ?
I agree about any prospective buyer going to  to listen to the instrument.

regards Peter B

Or, quite simply, you could re-use the pipework in an all-pipe organ and burn the rest  ;D

[NonPlayingAnorak]

The Electronic Organ Constructors' Society. That has to be second only to the Morris Marina Owners' Club on my list of organisations I REALLY don't want to be a member of... you can just imagine the kind of sad gits who'd be members of that club. Adenoids and all.

[David Pinnegar]

The Electronic Organ Constructors' Society. That has to be second only to the Morris Marina Owners' Club on my list of organisations I REALLY don't want to be a member of... you can just imagine the kind of sad gits who'd be members of that club. Adenoids and all.

Dear Richard

Might I suggest that you might show more respect for the "sad gits" who have the misfortune to be your elders?

Members of the EOCS are a very distinguished group of both organists and electronic engineers who are at the cutting edge of electronic development. They have included Mr Hart of Copeman Hart and a founder of the Makin firm, I beleive, and the man who designs and makes 90% of the combination pistons and multiplex control systems for pipe organ builders in this country. Members of the Society are designing currently systems that will make the computers of Hauptwerk redundant. Many of the concepts of commercial instruments have emerged from the Society.

What is worrying, however, is that the average age is significantly white haired and we are on the verge of losing a significant generation of technical know-how and experience. You would do well to become a member.

Upon this subject, one wonders how easily the current generation of electronics students might design a superhet radio set . . . If it can't be done by programming a computer nowadays . . . rather few people know how to do it.

Best wishes

Sad Git

[NonPlayingAnorak]

Yeah, all right. I made that comment (mostly) in jest. I can see that it's more interesting than I gave it credit for! I just hope that, in rendering Hauptwerk obsolete, they don't sacrifice its realism. I have yet to hear a conventional toaster - not even yours, I'm afraid - which sounds convincing.

[revtonynewnham]

Hi

I hope that I'm not a "sad old git" yet either!

There are very few people who would claim that electronics are better - or even equivalent - to the real thing.  But electronic organs have advantages in terms of size and short-term cost - and tuning stability.

Every Blessing

Tony

[David Pinnegar]

Yeah, all right. I made that comment (mostly) in jest. I can see that it's more interesting than I gave it credit for! I just hope that, in rendering Hauptwerk obsolete, they don't sacrifice its realism. I have yet to hear a conventional toaster - not even yours, I'm afraid - which sounds convincing.

Dear Richard

Sometimes jest can be offensive to others as well as demonstrating a lack of feeling, lack of finesse and lack of understanding or broadmindedness and it does worse injustice to the maker of such as jest as those with broad shoulders about whom such jests may be made. Similarly an apology with good grace can do great credit to the writer . . .

As you know, my instrument is not intended to "convince" as a pipe organ - it is there to be able to demonstrate the repertoire on the concert platform. If you compare the two recordings of
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alfred+hollins+concert+overture
the first at Coventry Cathedral and the second at Hammerwood Park, and compare them registration by registration, you'll find that the tonalities are, excepting the reeds as my instrument contains continental and baroque reeds suitable for a repertoire the english organs can't touch, remarkably the same.

With a choice of 200 stops or so it all comes down to what an organist wants to choose,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GyFn7Wmps8 being significantly different from the usual and inspired by study of continental organs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OARFBig_u9M

Whether it "convinces" depends on what one has experienced - and in fact the Hammerwood organ suffers from being in a small concert venue rather than a cathedral. Were it to be in a large resonant building, it would be very interesting - and in fact the Londonderry instrument from which the instrument developed was noted for having been remarkably effective there. Conventional toasters can keep interest in the organ alive so that they be replaced, as on this ebay auction, with a good pipe organ when enthusiasm mounts and the electronics fail.

Best wishes

Sad Git

[NonPlayingAnorak]

All right, I'm sorry, really and genuinely. I think what disappoints me most is the very artificial-sounding reverb you get on each note of a toaster - it tends to result in what I, years ago, called a 'plastic-coated' sound. This, I think, is where the likes of Hauptwerk, Marshall & Ogletree and so on come in... their sampling and their reverb and so on are completely different. If you're going to use a toaster to promote the virtues of the pipe organ and its repertoire, why not do it properly? Why are the mainstream toaster makers still getting away with such awful sampling/reverb etc?

[David Pinnegar]

If you're going to use a toaster to promote the virtues of the pipe organ and its repertoire, why not do it properly? Why are the mainstream toaster makers still getting away with such awful sampling/reverb etc?

Hi!

This is straying from the topic of this thread - but actually I think that I have tracked down what I don't like about the reverb that I have been using at Hammerwood - there are some speakers in the roof which were excellent . . . until we put in a false ceiling which caused the space to be significantly reverberant. I need to replace the functionality of that installation . . . - should have found a solution for 18th.

If anyone scraps a Viscount Domus 60 or 80, I'd like to play with the reverb units from those as I think it possible to similate multiple reflections from within that circuit.

Best wishes

David P

[KB7DQH]

Upon this subject, one wonders how easily the current generation of electronics students might design a superhet radio set . . . If it can't be done by programming a computer nowadays . . . rather few people know how to do it.

I would have to agree. I once met an "RF engineer" who couldn't get a simple "crystal radio" to work, and he was building from a kit!  I cobbled one together out of scavenged parts that was so effective
that absent other noises in the house it could be plainly heard... and this when I was but 10 or 11 years old-- And about this same time got my first experience with troubleshooting "valve" electronics,
ferreting out which capacitors had become "noisy" in the family "toaster"... with the help of a family friend who stopped by to visit, his occupation being an electrical engineer.

Seemed Baldwin used the cheapest parts they could find in these instruments which frustrated our efforts to keep the instrument in-tune and the least bit "musical" much less playable :o   So it was donated to a local technical school electronics program as a "student project" ;D

  In the early 1980's, there was "great interest" in the students attending, many vying for the opportunity to have a go at getting it working... reliably.

As far as the usefulness of the instrument in question at the very least the manuals and pedals would be usable for "controlling" most any technology, with the possible exception of "mechanical"  ;) ;)   

One could have "endless fun" with the possibilities...  Directly demonstrating the differences between subtractive synthesis vs recorded samples vs the "real deal" ;) 

Eric
KB7DQH

[NonPlayingAnorak]

Now, to stray even further off-topic:

Back in the late 1980s, there was a fire at the Parish Church here in Leatherhead. This was, before long, traced to an electrical short-circuit in the organ, an Allen pipeless instrument...

There was a smell of burnt toast in the air for days afterwards  ;D

Said fire also caused minor damage to the previous organ, a by-then unplayable, pneumaticised Victorian 3-manual Walker of no particular distinction, buried in the worst possible position in an acoustically very problematic medieval church. This led to the organ being dismantled, and the Victorian pipework was sold to Norway. However, it was discovered that there were about ten ranks of unaltered 18th Century pipework in it: this was originally attributed (mistakenly) to Snetzler, but was soon found to have come from the 1766 Thomas Parker instrument bought by the church in the 1840s from Watford Parish Church. Twenty years on, the Parker has been painstakingly reconstructed by Goetze and Gwynn - although still in a less-than-ideal position - and is glorious, but sadly, the replacement toaster remains their main instrument... Interestingly, just weeks after the Parker was reinstalled (complete with hand-blowing equipment!), a powercut struck just as the toaster struck up the first notes of the opening hymn of the main Sunday service, and they were forced to recruit a few men to pump the Parker instead!  ;D