"New" organ for my church at last...

[jbird604]

After months of contemplation, I'm finally going to swap out the organ at my church this week. The recent removal of the old pipes gave me a cause to address the church board, so I took the opportunity to offer the church one of my good refurbished organs in exchange for the aging and trouble-prone Galanti, and my offer was met with enthusiastic acceptance -- mostly because the pic of the organ is so attractive, but also because the instrument has an interesting pedigree and is an obvious step upward musically.

(For those who aren't aware of the situation, the church I've been serving for two years had a pipe organ once upon a time, but it became unplayable by the late 80's, needing far more work than the church could possibly afford. So its console was removed, pipes and chests left in place, and a new Galanti Praeludium II was installed, intended as a stop-gap organ, but that stop-gap has become 25 years now.)

Of all the organs in my shop, I have picked the Allen MDS-45 as the one I would most love to play every Sunday. It's not a big organ, but probably well-sized for our small church. Certainly far more organ in many ways than the Galanti, and it's one of the most modern organs to ever come through my refurbishing shop. And I think it will be an instrument that might attract a decent player to the church when I eventually retire.

I'll post more details about the organ and the install as it progresses. For now, I'm just happy to know that I'll be playing a much more interesting and responsive instrument next Sunday!

[OrgansR4Me]

Since you mention the removal of the old pipes, I was wondering will you be modifying the pipe chambers for any of your speaker chambers?

[mashaffer]

Congratulations.

mike

[jbird604]

I hope to eventually place speakers in the old pipe chamber, possibly even make it the primary location. That would get the organ sound out in the nave better and the organ wouldn't have to be so loud in the chancel. At the present time I can't put any speakers up there because the old pipe chamber has a roof leak (which is supposed to get repaired very soon), and also because the conduits that used to run between the chancel and the pipe chamber have been floored over and I will have to do some detective work and remodeling to get to them. And we still have to remove the old swell shades and other remnants of the pipe organ before the old chamber will be useful for speakers.

My plan is to have the great and pedal channels speak from the grilles in the chancel where the Galanti's speakers have always been, and to place some speakers back behind the choir in the baptistry for the swell division until I come up with a better place. (We just had a baptismal service, so the pool is empty right now and it might be weeks before we need it again. Hope I can come up with a permanent solution before then!)

Here are some pics of the console. I believe the shots of the knobs and couplers are clear enough for one to discern the stoplist.

[jbird604]

Here's the spec sheet from the Allen website. You can see that both manual divisions have secondary voices that replace some of the primary voices when enabled by a dedicated drawknob in each division. The Great division has a number of percussion stops and the swell has orchestral or synth-type voices. The percussions are pretty awesome, far better than the sad chimes on the Galanti, but the orch/synth voices on the swell may not be very useful.

The card reader doesn't work on this one because of battery damage that occurred years ago, so all references to "Alterables" are moot. I think once I get the MIDI Expander attached I'll never miss the card reader. I have an old original 64-voice MDS Expander that should be easy to install on this one.

This organ was retired from an Air Force Base chapel (unless I got the story wrong) and I suspect that it was retired because they believed it was going to cost a lot of money to fix it. It did indeed have problems when I got it, including bad electrolytic caps in the power supplies, the afore-mentioned card reader battery damage, and an issue on the memory board that caused it to drain the battery pack in about two weeks. It took almost two years of spare-time fixing, but I believe we solved all the problems it had other than the card reader, which is not going to be fixed.

[jbird604]

Here are a couple of pics of the sanctuary to help illustrate what I'm talking about. The view of the chancel shows the speaker grilles about halfway up the side walls of the chancel, about 3 feet wide and 6 feet high with an arch-shaped top (they are not very visible in this pic, but I think you can see them).

The baptistry, where I'm going to temporarily place the swell speakers, is behind the tall arch, under the stained glass window. I can put the speakers down in the floor of the pool (as long as it remains empty!) and angle them toward the opening.

The view of the nave shows the pipe chamber openings up above the back wall. The nave is relatively short, probably about 45 feet from the chancel rail to the back wall.

[beel m]

John-- what becomes of the Galanti? Just curious.
Bill Miller

[mashaffer]

Indeed, if I were closer to you I would be inquiring after the Praeludium as well. :D

mike

[jbird604]

The Galanti will either come to my house for a practice organ or we may offer it to a church for a bargain-priced starter organ. It wouldn't still be working if it weren't for the scrapped out identical organ in the shop, from which we've robbed parts to keep the church organ playing. I guess I'll decide what to do with it when I get a chance to spend some time with it. Its internal amps haven't worked in years, but I can rob the other PII to replace them. If the sound suits me through the internal audio, I may take it home.

Got the organs swapped out today, but the Boy Scouts had reserved the sanctuary for the evening, so I had to quit before getting into serious voicing. When the delivery men got it in place, I hooked it up to the speakers and found the sound quite disappointing. We'd done some preliminary voicing at the shop and I thought it would at least be balanced, but it was way out of whack. But then the speakers at the shop were nothing like the speakers I connected it to in the church. I've got to do some major tweaking before Sunday, and I'm really glad this is Monday and not Friday!

I wound up not putting speakers in the baptistry after all. Got to thinking how much work it would be to move them if we needed the pool, and decided to crowd it all into the existing grille space. I didn't bring the HC-type speakers that came with the organ, but connected it to some custom speakers that I had been using with the Galanti. I think the speakers are far from flat in response, and the irregularities in the curve are accenting the wrong frequencies in the Allen. For example, there seems to be too much windiness in several stops even with the wind turned all the way down. And I noticed on a 2' flute stop that a group of notes in one octave seemed louder than the other notes in the scale. So I've got to fiddle with the drivers and crossovers to flatten out the curve before I can get to the rest of the voicing.

Right now I'm worn to a frazzle after climbing up and down a ladder way too many times today, among other things, and that doesn't help my mood. I'd probably be more excited at this point if I'd gotten the pipe chamber cleaned up and had speakers back there instead of all up front where they've always been. But at least I'll have many more tone colors, interesting solos and percussions, marvelous celestes, a wonderful capture system, and many other niceties. The sound will eventually come around as I expand the audio into that big chamber and add more and better speakers.

[arie v]

Hi John,

Wish you success in the install of a newer organ in your church, so you can play a better instrument. I'm not sure you will find the individual stops sounding better in many cases, but the Allen should be quite a bit better when it comes to ensemble and flexibility.

I'm not surprised that just hooking the Allen up to the existing speakers resulting in a disappointing sound. You know obviously having been in the business for several decades that organs and speakers have to work in tandem with each other. Therefore, it makes sense that Allen speakers tend to work best with Allen consoles.

I prefer organ audio to be minimalist, by that meaning the less in the way of crossover parts, fewer drivers, but more individual audio channels produces a better overall result. It is so easy to mess up the audio signal by things that destroy phase accuracy, do odd things to the impedance, change frequency response, etc., and once things are messed up, you can't change it back without doing other damage.

If I were you, I would swap out the speakers and put in a battery of Allen HC speakers, and then setup and voice from there.

What kind of speakers have you got up there anyway?

Cheers

AV

PS: Is the MDS 45 the successor to the ADC-4300? Then it would have 4 audio channels, and a bass boost most likely. Am I correct? I don't recall ever seeing an MDS 45, but have worked on an ADC-4300, which I thought was quite good, much better than a similar ADC-4100.

[myorgan]

Congratulations, John. Maybe I'll need to visit again so I can play it.

Michael

[hybridlover]

John - best wishes on the upgraded instrument. I am sure it will sound outstanding.

[jbird604]

Thanks, guys! Arie, you are so right about speakers. The speakers I've been using with the Galanti were an oddball collection -- two Rodgers SW7.5 subs, two Rodgers M10 (old analog speakers), plus a pair of home-made units with 2-12" and 2 piezo tweeters in each one. The Galanti never sounded great, but I didn't suppose that speakers could help it much anyway. I'm understanding now that at least some of the dissatisfaction I had with the Galanti was due to these poor speakers.

So I'm going to the shop tomorrow and get the two Allen HC cabinets that I have left. At least I can make one division sound decent enough for Sunday. I've sold off some of the speakers than came in with this MDS-45 with other organs, and used the last of them recently to set up a rental Allen in a church where they'll be used for the next six months at least (construction project, having church in Parish Hall). So I have two and can probably make up some near replicas with some gutted HC boxes and salvaged crossovers I have in storage. Should keep me busy until Sunday.

Yes, the MDS-45 is the successor to the ADC-4300 with almost exactly the same stoplist and configuration, even down to the TG-10 board for air sound. It should sound great once I get it all working and voiced properly. One major change from the 4300 -- you can no longer un-mix the channels because the mixing is done inside the cage and only four audio channels come out. I could put active crossovers on the GP channels and give the lows their own amps and speakers, and may do that if I get around to it.

In all fairness, I also discovered another problem after getting it delivered to the church, and that has occupied time when I could have been changing out speakers. I believe the TG-10 board has an issue that causes a few stops to have excessive air sound even with the articulation turned completely off. It makes them sound very distorted and ugly, so I feel I have to address that issue promptly. Tomorrow I'm going to try pulling one of the EPROMs off the TG-10 board and see if the noise will go away. It's only one of the stop-group articulations that has gone wild, and I hope I can kill it by removing the associated EPROM.

Please do come and play this one, Michael! And this time you'll have to play something in the service if you come on Sunday! It may not sound as good as your 4300 though, at least until I get the pipe chamber cleaned out and put some speakers up there.

Goodnight, all, and thanks again for the kind words and wishes.

[jbird604]

Progess report. I solved the excessive wind noise problem yesterday. I had three swell stops -- Gemshorn 8, Flute Bouchee 8, and Flute a Fuseau 4 -- that were garbled and distorted, like way overboard "whind" on an old analog Allen. Turning down the wind control for these three on the TG-10 board would lessen the garbling but it wouldn't stop completely. Looking at the chart, I could see that the wind for these three voices all came from the same EPROM, so I pulled it off the TG-10 and problem solved. Of course these three voices now have no adjustable wind, but the mild built-in chiff on each one is perfectly suitable without the added TG-10 articulation. I suppose the TG-10 board is in fact defective, but it works OK for all the rest of the winded voices, so I'm not going to fret about it.

The sound is getting better. I didn't have time yesterday to change any speakers, but I played around with the voicing a bit and got some pretty pleasant sounds. Still planning to bring in my two HC cabinets to replace those old Rodgers M10 units on the swell channels as soon as I can, and will try to re-create an HC-15 style crossover for the home-made speakers on the other two channels. I don't think there is anything wrong with my drivers, I just think the crossover isn't right for the Allen sounds.

The PEDAL is awesome though, coming from the Rodgers SW7.5 subwoofers. I demonstrated the organ for the choir members last night, and the pedals were a big hit with the folks. Shakes the building like nothing I've ever heard in there before, even at the lowest volume levels. People were feeling it in their feet and chest all over the chancel. I don't even have active electronic crossovers on those channels, just a simple coil and capacitor that splits each great/pedal channel at about 200 Hz and sends the lows to the subs (in the floor behind the choir) and the highs to my speakers up in the chamber.

When this model was being sold, three of the channels got HC-15s and the one with the 32' stop got an HC-12 (foam woofer). Alternatively, the 32' channel could have an electronic crossover driving a subwoofer and the rest of it sent to an HC-15. But the Bourdon 16 is in the channel opposite the 32' Contre Bourdon, so it got no help from the sub in that arrangement. In my setup, the Bourdon 16 has a sub too, so it's quite profound by itself.

Allen designers made a good move in putting the four primary bass stops -- the Contre Bourdon 32, the Principal 16, the Bourdon 16, and the Leiblich Gedeckt 16 -- each in its own stop group. The bass component of each one is therefore adjustable without affecting the others, so one can get the exact degree of difference among the four as far as bass level. And they are all truly additive when brought in one at a time.

The 32' Contre Bourdon is evidently almost pure fundamental tone. The notes below the bottom G are not really audible, but you can definitely feel them. From G on up, the sound is like the most profound bass imaginable, very much like being in the room with real pipes. I had no idea the pedals were going to be so good. I suppose the room itself is friendly to the bass because it is much better than it was in the shop. We almost never hear this kind of realistic 32' sound even in the brand new organs we install, and I don't know why we don't.

Hope to get those speakers changed out and tweaked before Sunday. I'm getting really excited about introducing this marvelous instrument to the church, though I wish I could play better!

[Hamman]

IMO it doesn't matter if he is using Allen, Rodgers, or anybody elses speaker for that matter. Speaker Box acoustics, room acoustics will have to be tweaked accordingly. Depends where xover points are....what kind of octave on the xover point etc.etc. John sounds like a Ashly Protea DSP is in order for you! And some patience but I figure you know that well enough by the many years you've been in the bus. This comes from 30 years of sound reinforcement systems in stalled, repaired or tweaked in churches over the years. Are you going to run a RTA and flatten the speakers first? Sweeping sine wave? Or acoustically tweak the speakers for the building? It has always amazed me that most churches with electronic classical organs think you just plug and play when hooking up the organ for sound.( and then the organ or organist is/are always blamed for the crappy sound!) Unfortunately after all the wiring is in place, hidden in walls under floors over beams etc, and all the speakers strategically placed....with all the work involved to accomplish these task.....the hardest of all the jobs is yet to come. Voicing speakers, voicing speakers to room acoustics, general voicing organ to organ sound system and then the tedious, ever lasting, organ stop voicing. I'm sure John with your expertise in the field and perfectionist status , this organ will sound wonderful when its finally finished.....well its never ever really finished...but you know what I mean. BTW nice looking Sanctuary.