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**Philip the organist** · 04-16-2009, 06:25 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

Congrats!

**nullogik** · 04-17-2009, 12:36 AM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

What a great story JBird, I keep us updated on how well the new organ goes with the congregation. 

Its also nice to hear that the Rodgers will be going to another Church, a lot of these older organs still have a lot of life in them yet (particularly late analogues and early digitals) so its a pity to see them scrapped when there are plenty of Churches out there with far more inferior instruments still in use that could do with a free and significant upgrade.

Please keep us informed on how well the installation goes and how the congregation takes to it.

**arie v** · 04-17-2009, 06:05 AM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

John,

Stop it! You're bragging about getting a "new" used organ again. Don't you know, that may cause jealousy and possible disharmony on this list? After all there are those that are still toiling away on 50 year old Conn organs, with no prospects of improving their lot in life.

Anyways, your congregational friends must luv ya. Here is their organist giving them a different organ every few years, generally an improvement over what was before, and it doesn't cost them. Gotta love the economics of that.

I'm not sure I would consider the Allen ADC 4000 an improvement over what you already have. The late analog Rodgers were indeed pretty decent. I remember you saying the Rodgers had 6 audio channels but that routed all that into 1 channel and spread that sound back out through 6 amps. and speakers. Not something I would do. Hopefully you won't do that with the Allen, but keep the full 4 channels. Personally, I am not that fond of 32' stops. But it seems a necessary evil these days to put one on, even on small instruments with inadequate audio. 

Tonally, I was never that fond of even the early ADC instruments. To me they were hardly an improvement over the MOS-2 organs. It wasn't until the late ADC (like the ADC 4300) that I got interested in the Allen tone. But I know there are those who always liked the Allen digital sound, and the tone cards allowed for extra variety.

I am surprised your Rodgers 890 did not have MIDI. Yours must have been an early 890, as I think most Rodgers models had MIDI by about 1987.

Anyways, you are doing a good job in spreading the organ gospel. Better that these older organs get a new home and get used rather than sending them to the landfill.

AV

**jbird604** · 04-17-2009, 06:17 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

This was "install" day -- both for the old Rodgers and our "new" Allen. First wemoved the Rodgers 890 to its new home. Partner and I got it hooked up in about two hours. It soundedamazingly goodin the new setting, a smallish Baptist sanctuary seatingbetween 100 and150. The room was sort of live, not really enough, but certainly not funeral-parlor dead.

Because there were no chambers and no use at all in setting it up with 6 or 7 channels in that little room, we kept the mono-mix arrangement in place that I'd used in my own church. I know that was odd, but with a high-power audio system that never strains no matter how many stops you put on it is a viable option. I really wish you all could hear one set up like this. It might ease your anxiety about the concept.

We placed a couple of Allen PP-3 units in the front corners (up in thelight trays) aimed at the ceiling, augmented by a large woofer cabinet with a hefty 15" driver in it, placed in the floor near a front corner. 

The effect was truly awesome in spite of the simplicty. The clean and"fat" analog tones were just the ticket in that small room and it really sounded like a little pipe organ in there. We didn't set the volume as loud as we would have in a larger room or in a church more accustomed to a "real" organ. (This was replacing a horrid Lowrey spinet!) The church's musicians are ecstatic!

Yes, Arie, this is an early 890, built in 1984. No MIDI and Rodgers can't provide the needed components to add MIDI to it, so that was looking like a dead end and was one reason I decided to trade it. But it was alwaysawesome-sounding. And no, I'm not certain the ADC4000 is an "upgrade" -- I'm back to 2 manuals and stoptabs, and considerably fewer stops. I had come to really love the sounds of the old Rodgers, and almost cried when I heard it in the new location, itsounded so sweet. But the ADC4000 will have MIDI on it by this time next week -- one plug-in board! -- and that will open up a whole new door for me.

I spent much of the afternoon cleaning up the Allen, as it was removed from a church in the midst of renovation and they apparently had left it uncovered during painting, sheetrock mudding, and various other construction operations (!) -- but I was able to remove the detritus and found it to be in pretty good cosmetic condition.

The better news is that EVERYTHING about it WORKS! Apparently a very fine and knowledgeable Allen tech has been taking care of it since 1984. The rechargeable battery packs had both been changed out in recent years and there is no sign that battery acid ever leaked on the boards. The battery pack that was in the cage has been relocated to a box outside the cage, per Allen's recommendations. Thebattery on the capture board is in a sealed shrink-wrapped package.

The capture action fired right up and all the tabs work smoothly. No key contact problems, no problems with stop switches or pedal magnets, Card Reader works! And it came with about 22 cards in the drawer!

Most of the cards are reeds and percussions, which is nice because that's where this model is most lacking. There is a pair of chime cards which must be loaded together, and the result is a very nice "electronic-organ"chime. Also the chrysoglott and bells, etc. And many nice solo and chorus reeds -- clarinets, trumpets, krummhorn, tuba, etc.

Tomorrow I will do some voicing and (hopefully) practice a little. Sunday morning the proof will be in the pudding. I can already tell that it sounds decent, though a little strident at the moment. I hope to remedy that through voicing.

Will probably report after Sunday.

John

**jbird604** · 04-18-2009, 12:28 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

Quick report after spending the morning on voicing andgetting in a little practice time. I'm starting to appreciate the Allen, though I still have some yearnings for the Rodgers. I expect these will pass with time as I get used to the Allen and learn to enjoy its particular quirks.(Sort of like a new romance, huh?)

It only took me a little whileto establish the proper balances among the stops. The ADC4000 has the stops divided intonumerous groups. Each grouphas its own set oftone and levelcontrols. Mostgroups consist of four stops, though on the great the mixture and trumpet share a board by themselves.Also, each Alterable stop has its own set of controls.

So, after I established a reasonable level for the Great Principal 8, I compared each stop to it and regulated each one to an appropriate level.Then I listened to the stops in each group and made minor adjustments to the bass or treble, always aware that what might benefit one stop in the group might work against the other three.

Soon I had things in good order, though I plan to have my partner go over all this with me next week. I should be able to make moreprecise adjustments with him at the keyboards while I'm at the controls. But I got it close enough to use it tomorrow, and then I got to do some practicing.

I very quickly noted that the pistons of theAllen require a firmer press and perhaps lingering on one fora fraction of a second while the tabs physically move. (This is NOT one of those old sequential flippity-floppity actions, but it does take some fraction of a second for the tabs to flip.) With the Rodgers, a light tap on the piston was all that was needed and the registration changed instantly and silently. However, I think I'll get used to that soon. 

When I was selling Allen, the moving tabs/knobs constituted a major "selling point!" From this perspective, I'm not so sure that wasmuch of a deal for the typical buyer. I think I could go the rest of my life without actually seeing a tab move! A light or LED is sufficient.

AUDIO CHANNELING: Arie, you'll be happy to know that I'm breaking out of my "mono" concept with this one. I didn't go so far as to use the fourS-100 amps andHC-12 cabinets that came with it. The speakerswere thoroughly afflicted with foam rot anyway. I am using the big audio setup that I designed for the other organs we've had. It's a true stereo system with a bi-amp on each side. Each side has an active crossover and apair of 800 watt amps, one for the woofer array (4 - 18" woofers per side) and another for the mid/tweeter arrays (total of 9 - 8" and 3 - horn tweeters per side).

I ran the four channels of the Allen into four inputs of a stereo mixer. Using this mixer, I canPAN each channel so that its apparent location can sweep across the front of the church to anywhere I want to place it.

My first try was panning both swell channelshard leftand both great channelshard right. That was interesting, but made it a little hard to tell what I was playing, as the console is closer to the right speakers than tothe left.

What I eventually settled on was to pan Swell 1 somewhat left, Swell 2 somewhat right, Great 3 somewhat left, and Great 4 somewhat right. That way each division of the organ has some spread between its pair of channels, but the separation is not so great that it sounds different to me at the console than it does to the people in the pews. 

Iran this final stereo mix through my Alesis MIDI-verb 4 and found the Concert Hall reverb to be the most pleasing. In the past, I have found myself going back and forth between lots of reverb (concert hall) and little or none. So I may change my mind about this after trying it on Sunday.

While the old MOS Allens were rightly criticized for sounding "sterile" -- everything being tied to the same pitch standard -- this ADC could almost be faulted for being too "wild" in its tuning! Each manual has two separate pitch references, with the pedals having yet another pair, analagous to having six full sets of oscillators working. Furthermore, there is a considerable "stretch" to the tuning, so that octaves beat to a noticeable extent.

And the coupling is what Allen would call "natural" -- the coupler causes the coupled-in notes to sound JUST AS IF the keys were depressed. (As opposed to "synthetic" coupling, which the old MOS organs used.) This means that the separate pitch references of the swell are still at work when the swell is coupled to the great, and playing a single key you will hear all four of them at once!

Of course, a pipe organ always exhibits a great deal of tuning randomness, and that is considered a good thing. So I'll get used to this on the Allen. It's just another thing that's strikingly different from the Rodgers.

I will enjoy the Card Reader. Today Imade a flute celeste by usinga flutecardin both alterables with celeste tuning. A much sweeter flute celeste than I'd had on the Rodgers, though also a bit "digital" sounding -- some kind of converter noise in the background. Perhaps I can tune that outwhen I spend more time onvoicing next week.

I don't miss the 32' stop, at least not yet. There is bountiful bass anyway, and the multiple 16' stops give one plenty of options in the pedal department. The pedal's only reed, a 16' Posaune, is weak right now, but maybe I can bring it out with more voicing.

MIDI -- I just placed the order with Allen for the kit. Hope to have MIDI on it next weekend. Don't have any MIDI modules lying around, but can use the strings on my Casio keyboard! Or maybe set up the oldcomputer with jOrgan.

If anyone got to the bottom of this long ramble, then I hope you enjoyed it! 

John

**Philip the organist** · 04-18-2009, 02:04 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

I enjoyed it.

**jbird604** · 04-18-2009, 05:17 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

Philip,

You are very kind, my friend. Once I get started I don't know when to quit!

My wife heard the organ today and immediately pronounced it an improvement over the other one. And she's a pianist, not particularly an organ fan. That was encouraging to me!

We see, hear, and play different organs every day of the week, so it's hard for me to be objective. All organs are "different" but it's hard to conclude that some are "better" than others -- when comparing essentially excellent instruments to one another.

But I'd staked a lot on my belief that this one, being digital, was going to have advantages over the other one, in spite of being the same age and a little smaller. I do think I did the right thing.

Can't wait to play it for the congregation tomorrow. Hope you have a great day of worship. Bless your people with uplifting and grace-imparting music!

John

**afuller5** · 04-19-2009, 12:03 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

John,

I, too, am enjoying your posts about your church's "new" Allen.

Keep us posted.

Allen

**OrgansR4Me** · 04-19-2009, 03:47 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

John, your country church may have some drawbacks; but not in the music department. God has used you to bless the congregation in a way most small churches have never known. May you enjoy thoroughly your "new" Allen!

**jbird604** · 04-19-2009, 06:02 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

After using it for two services today,suffice it to say I'm now thoroughlyconvinced it was a good trade. Yes, Arie, the 890 was a fine analog, possibly about as good as they got. And the ADC4000 is not as advanced as the later ADC/MDS and certainly a different animal from today's long-sample digitals.

But it was just so much more like playing pipes. The randomness of tuning was just right and reminded meconstantly of that typical slightly out of tune pipe organ. And the Allen attack and decay characteristics seemso much more pipe-like. Yes, the 890 has separate keyers for all the stops and each has some sort of attack/decay modifier, but still the analog's attacks and decays are much like flipping a toggle switch on and off, just too electronic. The Allen computer does a much better job of simulating pipe behavior in that regard.

I used the "chiff" all the time during congregational singing, and it seemed to put just the right amount of punch into the tone, clarified the rhythms. And it's a very basic chiff, not the more refined chiff of late ADC and not nearly as realistic as the true sampled attack transients of today's digitals. But it works as a punctuation tone and I never felt the congregation lagging. I do play with a lot of detachment during congregational hymns.

It was gratifying to have a number of folks come by the console to express their enjoyment of the "new" organ. Folks who don't know anything about organ except that they enjoy the music were commenting that it just seemed to fill the sanctuary better, that it blended better with the singing and with the piano. A common comment was that it sounded "brighter," and perhaps the mixtures are a little more aggressive. But I suspect it was the crisp articulation and the extra clarity of the non-unified choruses that folks were hearing so distinctly, even without knowing what the difference was.

The panning of the audio channels across the church probably had some positive effect as well. There was a liveliness in the sound imparted by the subtle differences in sound coming from the two stereo sides, and particularly as mixed around a bit by the Alesis reverb.

CARD READER: Came in handy already. I played a simple on-the-fly arrangement of "Sweet Hour of Prayer" as the ushers collected the morning offering. I had loaded the Chrysoglott card into one of the Alterables and blended it with theceleste strings on the swell. I played a stanza on this combination, then switched to a fuller foundational tone, then finished with a phrase back on the chrysoglott/celestes. Very simple and stress-free, but effective and interesting.

I'm going to love having the Alterables playable on the swell alone, even as the swell couples to the great -- the alterables don't couple unless you use the separate alterable-to-great coupler. One can load up a big reed into both alterables and use it like a festival trumpet without sacrificing the ability to couple the nativeswell stopsto the great and pedal.

Next week, if nothing happens, I'll have MIDI on it and then there will be new territory to explore. Partner will be going to the church with me one day this week to listen and we'll probably make some minor changes to the voicing. It can only get better!

John

**nullogik** · 04-20-2009, 12:20 AM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

Thanks John for keeping us updated, I've really enjoyed reading these posts. Its nice to be able to follow a story from installation right through to the first performance.

I've never had the oppotunity to use Allen tone cards (though I have played card reader enabled models) but it seems like you can have a huge amount of fun playing around with the different cards! Perhaps you could start making your own with DavidCasteel's Excel spreadsheet - the hours of enjoyment you could have playing around with that to get all sorts of wierd and wonderful tones.

**arie v** · 04-20-2009, 10:46 AM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

John,

I don't doubt that the Allen organ is sounding different than the Rodgers, and perhaps better. It is hard to pronounce on something without hearing it on site.

Personally I always felt the opposite of what you say in terms of playing the instrument. I always felt that Rodgers had more of a pipe organ feel and response as compared to the Allen digitals which felt like playing a machine-like object. In fact that is how I feel about a lot of digital organs. Rodgers instruments did have some noticeable defects from a musical point of view though. One was, the pedal stops, such as the 16', spoke way too quick, almost like a Hammond to me. another was, generally too much unification and borrowing, so not enough tonal variety at the stop level. I suppose too, with the Rodgers being over 20 years old, that the attack transients would have changed a little over the years as the electrolytic capacitor values change.


Anyways, I believe your modus operandus in organ installs is different than what I do. Unless there is space consideration, or financial constraints, I always recommend more audio channels and acoustic mixing rather than typical sound reinforcement concepts, which tends to work with big amplifiers and big speakers in either stereo or mono, and you double triple or even more project the same tone. You may get more than enough volume, and even dispersion that way, but you can't get anything that sounds like a real organ that way. You can't get an ensemble tone by shoving the organ's resources through a mono setup. Besides phase summing and phase cancellations you get increased intermodulation distortion. Who knows you may get additional harmonic distortion as well. When putting a lot of stops through only 1 or 2 channels you also lose the independence of tone, so the overall is going to be just a mush of sound.

With the Rodgers, it would have been important to have speakers that acted as the final filter in the tone production. Factory voicing with Rodgers speakers generally sounded half decent. Good dealers would go in and change filter components and put on different speakers to get a much better result. Just adding different speakers could make things sound worse. The Rodgers also tended to sound much better when creative tuning schemes were used.

With the Allen, you do get a more accurate tone, but in and of itself, it is kind of boring. At least with ADC, Allen used more waveforms across the keyboard, more pitch sources, and gave some voicing controls, so they were a definite improvement on the early MOS-1 organs. They still sounded like Allens to me. With a good install, these instruments could sound pretty decent. 

Personally, I view the digital organ as a substitute for the pipe organ. My installs tend to show it. So I tend to put on maximum audio complements without duplication (unless the room is huge). I disperse the stops of anyone division through as many, or all audio channels. I have done installs of 16 channel organs, where the Great stops would utilize all 16 channels, the Swell, would also use those 16 channels. At least you have a sense of ensemble buildup for every division, that sounded acoustic rather than electronic. I also work on the tuning of the instrument, to make the ensemble shimmer, without sounding raggedly out-of-tune.


I am glad that manufacturers are at least seeing the benefits of increased audio channels. I notice that Allen has increased the # of audio channels by 50% on larger models, and then you can increase that by going the "interlaced audio" route.

Anyways, the main thing is if you and the congregation is happy with the improvement. An organ in a church is a tool for making music and aid in worship. If it does it better than the previous instrument, so much the better the woship experience. 

Sometimes I am impressed by older organs, and rather unimpressed by recent installs. Goes to show that, progress while definite, is rather slow for the most part. More important is the quality of the install and setup to make it musical.

John, so what do you want your ultimate organ goal to be. A Rodgers Trillium? An Allen Quantum? A Walker, perhaps? A Marshall & Ogletree? You never know, what will become available for free. Who would have thought a decent Allen organ, not that old, becoming available for free. Goes to show how society values these items these days.

Must run............

AV

**davidecasteel** · 04-20-2009, 11:41 AM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

[quote user="nullogik"]I've never had the oppotunity to use Allen tone cards (though I have played card reader enabled models) but it seems like you can have a huge amount of fun playing around with the different cards! Perhaps you could start making your own with DavidCasteel's Excel spreadsheet - the hours of enjoyment you could have playing around with that to get all sorts of wierd and wonderful tones.
[/quote]Anyone wanting my Tone Cards spreadsheet and the accompanying instructions document just send me your e-mail address and I'll send them to you. (Of course, to make use of that technology to make new cards, one has to have an IBM card punch available.)

David

**SuperOktav** · 04-20-2009, 12:44 PM

Re: "New" organ for my church (again!)

Congrats on your "new" organ! My church also has an Allen from 1984 (a 3 manual). The sound really isn't all that bad, and it certainly packs a good punch. The only thing that bothers me is the useless Allen dealer that services it and refuses to notice and fix broken things like a flute stop that sounds like a jackhammer. I wish you were our organ technician! 



Anyway, if you get a chance can you post a video of the organ? I would love to hear how it compares to ours since they are the same technology. I'm really fond of Allens from this time period, in fact I think the organ in my church beats a new Quantum installation that I recently heard. [:S]

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"New" organ for my church (again!)

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