Hi Buzzy,
The Allen MDS organs were the next generation after the ADC models and the digital sampling technology had greatly improved giving the organ stops more realistic pipe sound. MDS then evolved into the Rennaisance series. I would go with the MDS.
Mike
Hey! Thanks everyone for the help. As bitchy as I am sure I sound when talking about performance practice, I am sooo glad that other people have knowledge of these areas.
My question is now: by more limited MIDI on the ADC or whathave you, what do you mean? If I plan on just using it with Hauptwerk, will I really run into problems? I am definately NOT going to get into fancy arranging and orchestration, I have a midi thing for that and I don't do it now. I would only use it for Hauptwerk practice.
I just found out that the owner of the ADC wanted at least $5,000. What the )#$^. A 1981 car wouldn't fetch half of its original value, why do these uneducated owners beleive their Allen Organ dealrs who purposely mark up everything just so it appears that Allen Organs 'hold their value' for eternity. This practice, makes it impossible for organists to purchase decent practice organs and thereby makes it impossible for anyone to teach and learn. Great business practice Allen!
This is as dumb as them not selling individual tone cards until people got fed up.
If you don't want to go to a 3 manual console, and you are only interested
in Midi to run Hauptwerk, why not keep your venerable Allen 600?
The console is built like a tank and will last another half a century.
Strip all the guts out and add a midi controller.
This shouldn't cost even $1,000 plus some wiring.
Of course, if those Allens are 3 manuals, then forget what I said.
Well, first of all, i wanted somethign smaller, such as my TC-3 which I suppose I could midify. Also I HATE the keys on the 600 beast, as NYCfarmboi put it, they are like plastic milk carton plastic.
I will be moving quite a bit in the next five years with one year positions opening and such so I'd love to have somethign I can just put on a cart and wheel off. I dont' know if I can take my Allen 600 with me anywhere of I'll have to leave it at the 'parental unit's' dwelling.
You can add midi to any organ console.
It is a little easier if you do NOT wish to keep the exisiting tone generators.
If you take all the oscillators out, the TC-3 is a pretty empty console.
Several companies sell midi kits which need to be wired to the keys and stops.
You can use the exisiting contacts.
Stops are similar. I seem to remember that most tc-3s had a setterboard
which moves the stop tablets.
If so, you could also get rid of the setterboard and wire the stops up to
a console controller like Artisan's and it will then be a multilevel combination
action as well as midi encoder.
If the organ amplifiers and speakers are still in good condition, you can use
those with the Hauptwerk tone generating system.
Hope this helps a little. I am in the Pacific Northwest and might be able
to provide some hands-on help if you are near here.
I thought of doing that myself, but when you get down to it, it's a lot of work. If you have the time, fine.
Now that I have an ADC-1140 I'll speak to a couple things. I got a great price on this organ. Firstly, the keys are not like milk cartons. I've had a 1920s Steinway with ivory keys, and they aren't that nice, but they aren't THAT soft a plastic. If they feel too slick to you they might have become oily...rub them with a cloth slightly damped w/isopropyl alcohol and you can fix that problem. Think of the eons a female organist using hand lotion might have played those keys!
As for the sound...MOS had a lower sampling rate, but both ADC and MOS are 8 bit systems. (MOS might even just be 7 bits - anybody know for sure?). As for sounding like an Atari, that is probably more a function of sampling rate. However my ADC has pretty bad quantization noise if you are using a lone stop like a gedackt. Because of the clock rate of the circuitry it's worse on certain notes, especially E1, F1, E2 and F2. The alterable channels are slightly better for whatever reason. But I can deal with it, it's really not too irritating unless you are listening for it. However if you plan to use the organ with headphones and think this might bother you, be warned. The MDS organs were 16 bit so don't have this problem. On the other hand they didn't have the ability to turn chiff on or off, which I find useful. Also, on the ADC organs when you are playing with a fairly full ensemble - add some 4' stops or reeds and mixtures - you have 8 bits over at least 2 channels with 2 frequency sources...so the realism improves and the quant. noise is partially hidden.
ALSO if you buy an old e-organ of any kind...I am NOT one to do product endorsement but use some kind of legitimate contact cleaner to clean the whole audio path. (but be very careful removing RCA jacks on an Allen board...the inner jack connection can loosen and if you weren't careful you could twist it off the board) I used CAIG Deoxit but MG Chem's Techspray probably works well, too. It didn't make a huge improvement in the sound but made a definite positive difference - and I'm not some high end audio cult member who thinks, for example, special $500 power cables are required for an amplifier to work correctly!
I previously talked down the value of old organs - and what I said is still true and valid - but I continue to marvel at the sophistication and tedious assembly details of even this 1988 piece of equipment. A lot of work went into making it and with things you can't just buy off the shelf or produce with great economies of scale. IF every home in America needed a classical e-organ they'd be cheaper, conversely if Toyota only made 1000 Camrys a year, they'd probably cost > $100,000...that being said, anybody expecting > 1500 for a 1 or 2 computer MOS is crazy.
my own reference to Allen using cheap grade milk carton grade plastic pertained to their new Rennaisance organ which was installed a bit over a year ago at my church which most definately does have low grade cheap milk grade carton type plastic keys. VERY CHEAP keys.
My 1971 Allen 123C has fine plastic keys, MUCH NICER. I think Allen went the low grade cheap plastic route only recently.
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