ADC 430A Allen Organ - Midi

[bigbertha]

Hello, a quick question. At my church, we have an old ADC 430 A Allen Organ, without midi. I have recently obtained some quality virtual organ software, and wanted to see if I could hook up the organ at my local church to the software. However, the organ, as stated previously, does not have midi inputs or outputs. Is there a way that I may be able to hook up the organ via midi to the software, to give it a bit better sound?

Any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated. I do have the number for the local dealer if I need to go though him, but I didn't want to bother him without checking to see if it is even possible.

Thanks

BB

[don60]

Allen can supply an elementary MIDI board that plugs right in to the existing cabling of your organ. But it isn't cheap (last figure I heard around the forum was $900) and it does not do anything except encode and decode the notes. (It cannot encode or decode the stop tabs or expression pedals.) But a number of the regulars around here have it on their organs, and it works well for what it was designed to do. If you just want to generate note on/off signals to work with a virtual organ, it would be fine.

[bigbertha]

okay, thanks! is there a... Less expensive option out there that will do that by chance?

[don60]

Sadly, no. Aftermarket boards are available for the MOS series organs, but not for the ADC.

[bigbertha]

allright, thanks!

[don60]

These boards do turn up occasionally when someone parts out the tone generation system of an ADC. Pray for a miracle and one might come your way.

If you are thoroughly dissatisfied with the Allen sound and want to go with a strictly virtual setup, lots of parts and information are available for converting the ADC and MOS instruments for MIDI. I really cannot advocate this approach for a functioning instrument--they mostly should be kept intact and appreciated for their capabilities, which are really quite good even by today's standards. In the case of a lightning strike or other major damage that is not cost-effective to repair, then MIDIfying an old console is a good way to give it new life.

Don

[Guest]

Hey there, I'm in the middle of a similar project. I play an ADC530 at our church, and have discovered Hauptwerk. The Allen board is jaw droppingly expensive, but at present it seems to be the only way to go unless you want to trash the sound system presently on the organ. Going that way opens up a lot of other challenges though. Get out your soldering iron and read a schematic. There is a way to add on an optical sensor strip that will also give you velocity MIDI info. for $1800.00.
I discovered that you can hook the computer up to the organ's sound system. This is the easiest part of the whole project! Open the back of the organ up and check to see if there are two RCA jacks on the mixer board labeled RYTM (or similar) On my organ, I just plugged into these two jacks and was pleasantly surprised when the sound came through the organ's amp and speakers! The expression pedal even controls the volume!
I got dibs on the first Allen MIDI translator that comes up though.....LOL

[bigbertha]

Yeah... "fixing the sound" wouldn't be the best way to go for me right now... (it would not end well). I'm not sure of some RCA inputs on the back of the console, but I do know where some are the should link right into the house sound.

Where can I find one of those Velocity midi things?

[Admin]

Sadly, no. Aftermarket boards are available for the MOS series organs, but not for the ADC.

I'd like to manufacture one similar to the MOS2 keyboard encoder that I offer, but haven't been able to get my hands on the necessary organ schematics.

[Guest]

The optical sensor strip I was talking about is available from midi9.com they do a lot of pianos, but the have a system for organs also. They quoted $1800.00 Do it yourself kit.

[Guest]

Hey admin..... The brand .A.
ADC and MADC matrix system is a 4 x 4 setup for the manuals. 4 control wires with 16X4 data wires. another member gave me a brand A wiring diagram for it. I keep hoping that someone can come up with a midi translator for these ADC MADC organs. Seems that some enterprizing guru can whip some freaky engineer mojo on one of the MOS boards and make it talk to the ADC's. I am really burnt out on the brand A dealer network. If you're not in that dealers territory, they won't even talk to you! My local dealer has yet to get back to me. I'm tempted to call the factory and see if they can supply me a board at a reasonable price. I better stop the rant about dealers, I'm afraid the forum will banish me to the grease pit permanently... LOL ...

[Guest]

Sorry, one more thing.... You mentioned tapping into the house sound system. BE VERY CAREFUL... The bass sounds from some of these virtual instruments can blow stuff up if you don't have speakers that will take the really low notes!

[bigbertha]

There's a lot of great information there, Ah if only it had the right inputs this would make service playing and life a whole lot easier :D Thanks for the heads up about the bass, it makes perfect sense for that to happen, I just never thought about it until you mentioned it. I was playing for a congregation (in another building with an organ that has MIDI) on sunday with Hauptwerk and it sounded amazing! and I had my eye/ear on the notes to not go above what the regular organ console would put out. I believe it went over quite well. :)

[circa1949]

yeah thanks for clarifying bombarde, I don't follow this as closely as I used to when I owned an ADC organ, but I thought I read somewhere that someone had "cracked" the ADC keyboard "code" (LOL) and it was a relatively simple matrix arrangement, not dissimilar from any other such scheme...and could easily be encoded with a slight modification to existing matrix-to-MIDI converters.

[MikeOf Bonsall]

I'm just about to buy a ADC-530 just to convert to MIDI for Hauptwerk and am surprised it seems difficult to some. Is it not true that all you need is to tap into the keyboards with a matrix to midi card and likewise with the pistons and toe studs and expression pedals and junk the internal amp and voice generators? If this really is problematic then please someone warn me. An alternative would be to to gut save keyboards and pistons and toe studs to a midi pedal board which is still no more than the useless Allen midi board. A midi board without piston or toe stud control is not much help for a virtual organ.