Rodgers 115 speaker help

[marko3119]

I have purchased a Rodgers 115 for $150 and it looks to be a wonderful instrument for my daughters beginning organ. It has 2 manuals and an AGO pedal board. Everything is very basic on this organ, but that is what I was looking for for her to start on. I am putting this in my house and it did not come with speakers. This model did not come with internal speakers. I think it is similar to the model 110 but was built for Mormon churches from what I can find. It has 2 amplifiers with 2 channels each in the console and I am looking for speakers that would be suitable for home use. I would prefer to purchase a decent set of used speakers, but I don't know what to look for. I would also prefer not to fill the entire room with speakers, but find two speakers with a full range. I'm not sure if this organ can use a sub, but if so that might be good for a possible third speaker. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I am a symphony bass player and am new to this and am just wanting to have a good beginning instrument for her to practice at home on.

Mark

[indianajo]

The obvious answer is used Allen, Rogers, or Johannus speakers in the Western Hemisphere. In the eastern hemisphere Wersi and Orla have made some things that are being pulled out of churches. The church installations frequently included 5 or 8 speakers, and those are surplus to requirements for a home. Two should be adequate, with a third subwoofer if one is partial to the 32' bass stops and have the amps to drive one.
in the almost free department, are tone cabinets from Hammond, Conn, and Wersi. Some of these have 15" drivers and hence are suitable for 16' stops as is. Some are stereo. The Hammond TC10 is widely reviled for not being a Leslie, has a 15" bass channel, and two 8" treble channels spaced 3' apart in a single cabinet. The Hammond Condor had a 15" speaker and one 8" speaker. These almost can't be given away. They have internal amplfiers with an obsolete interface design, so some work would be required to remove the amp or rewire it for interfacing to the Rogers.
A third option, available almost everywhere is used bar band PA equipment. I'm getting quite good organ sounds (off LP's and CD's) from a pair of Peavey SP2-XT with 15" drivers set on poles on one end of my living room. I drive these with a very modest 60 w/channel amp and they are fine for 16' stop, but don't really cover 32' stop. They were about $600 for the pair and the stands, (poles) and have 3 db frequency response of 56 to 14000 hz. Similar horn + 15" woofer designs are sold by JBL (the successor to the Bell Labs patent), Yamaha, and the less durable Mackie, American Audio, and other designs. Note pro PA equipment is specified at +- 3db point frequency responses, whereas a lot of consumer equipment quote unqualified frequency responses that might be +-10db and might be complete vapor, like the R**** S**** optimus series. Take an organ CD and an adapter cable to 1/4 phone plug to the sales point (a trailer in rural KY, in the case of my Peavey gear) and listen to the sound and see what you think. The Peavey SP2 is 8 ohm and offers the possibility of being paralled on most amps with an 8 ohm subwoofer, for a total amp load of 4 ohms. However, I don't know what the Rogers will drive. Counting the number of output transistor pairs gives some indication, a one pair of TO3 transistor amp is probably limited to 8 ohm load, whereas 2 pairs might be able to drive 4 if the power is limited. The listening test allows you to screen out speakers that have torn drivers or bad suspensions, which might be repairable in the case of a Peavey with factory parts available, but certainly should draw more like $75 apiece instead of $300 for a working unit like I bought.

[toodles]

If you send me a PM with your email, I can send you a PDF of the original brochure.

If I recall correctly, the 115 did not contain amplifiers within the console. The brochure indicates up to 4 channel operation; 2 channels was "recommended". The 4 channels are flute, diapason & main, swell, and pedal.

I owned one of these for a while, and suspect you'd be happy with 2 channels in a home environment. Personally, I'd recommend Allen HC14 or HC15 speakers for the home. They are much smaller than Rodgers speakers, and do a fine job, though they are not tiny by any means. If you get these Allen speakers, you would not need a subwoofer. As an alternative, two bookshelf speakers would be OK if you added a subwoofer. Walker Technical company made a small column speaker--TP3, if I remember right. I'm not sure if the console has space to mount amplifiers in it--Rodgers S100 or S101 is the standard amplifier, and a workhorse. Amps & speakers are commonly available on ebay. If you can find them locally it will save substantially on shipping (for the speakers).

The model was similar to the 110, but it did not include the harp/carillon, and instead had an 8' Cromorne on the Great and added an additional octave of pitches to make 2' complete to the top octave. I consider those a good swap. The model was designed for LDS Wards.

Toodles

[marko3119]

Thank you for your replies to my post. Having the information about the speakers will point me on the right direction to getting this organ playing again. Being new to the organ world, I have one other question. Before I push it all the way against the wall, should I take off the cover and do a vacuuming of the inside? I don't know the service history of the console, but I also don't want to do something that will harm it more than help. I could also do a visual inspection to see if any connections are bad. Any ideas about this? Thank you again.

Mark

[indianajo]

The heat sinks and fan screens, if any, could certainly be vacuumed off, but I wouldn't use a vacuum around any PWB's that might contain MOS technology parts. Those can be cleaned with a rag, a pick and some water or alcohol.
You should certainly look in there so see if anybody has installed aftermarket amps to supplement the original ampless condition toodles reports. They will look something like this 60 w/ch amp with 2 pairs of TO3 transistors (steel lozenge) on heat sinks, or like this other 40 w/ch amp with 2 pairs of TO247 transistors (plastic with heat tab) on heat sinks.
Not having amps points you to the powered speaker market or powered mixer market. If you have 4 channels and are going to play into two speakers, you're going to need some sort of mixer if it is not already installed, and a powered one that will drive speakers costs little more than a professional line level mixer. Many pro mixers will have a crossover that will split off the sub channel into its own amplifier.

[Jan Girardot]

Marko;

If you are interested in an original Rodgers service manual for your Deseret 115, I have one for sale from my collection. Please contact me off-Forum at [email protected]

. . . Jan
the OrganGrinder

[marko3119]

I have a little update on my "new" Rodgers 115. There are in fact two 100w amps inside the console and they have 4 speaker connections inside that you can just use regular speaker wire to connect to. These connector blocks are on the inside of the back cover at the bottom on the opposite side of the console where the amps are located. They seem to have a factory stamp on the wood around each of the connectors that read from left to right, FLUTE, PEDAL, DIAPASON, and SWELL. Since this organ did not come with speakers when I bought it I decided to hook up a small bookshelf speaker just to see if everything worked. When I hooked it up to the FLUTE about 2/3 of the stops seemed to function. When I hooked it up to the pedal almost all of the stops worked. I haven't hooked it up to the other two yet, but here is my question. Will I have to have 4 speakers to get this to fully function correctly? I was really hoping to get by with just two speakers. Can I connect 1 speaker to 2 of these speaker terminals or will that cause more problems? I have found out a little more about the background of this organ. The guy I bought it from is a piano mover in the area and he removed it from an LDS church in the area. He said it had one large panel of several 6x9 speakers and some sort of a bass or sub cabinet. All of these speakers have since been sold for parts and are no longer available to me. I'm having trouble getting straight answers about what kind of speakers to use for this organ from local people. I have gotten a few very good thoughts from this forum though, so I thought I would try again. I'm also finding it difficult to locate used speakers locally. I did purchase a repair manual for this and it said that it was supposed to use the 6x9 array of speakers or Klipsch La Scala speakers. I did some looking into the La Scala speakers, and even used they are quite expensive. These La Scala speakers didn't seem to be a dedicated organ speaker, but a high end audio speaker from the past. Is there another kind of speaker that will give me a good sound without having to bypass the internal amps? I was looking into the Allen HC-14 but haven't had much luck finding them used, with the exception of someone selling them in Florida for $250 each and the shipping to Oklahoma would but fairly expensive. Just wondering if anyone else had some thoughts. Thank you again.

Mark

[indianajo]

I ran into a guy that owned La Scala's on the diyaudio forum. People proposed we have a sound test of his "cheap PA speakers masquerading as a hifi speaker", and my Peavey SP2-XT " high power PA speakers performing tricks as a hifi speaker". Both are woofer + horn designs, leading back to the Bell Labs 1935 patent for movie theaters and the subsequent Altec Lansing product line that morphed into JBL products. I heard Altec Lansings Voice of the Theater speakers at a cinema in 1967, was impressed by the accuracy, and haven't been able to afford a pair in the 40 years since. I was delighted to find out Peavey was making a copy in Mississippi in 2009, tried out some at the pro music shop on piano source material which is particularly difficult, and finally bought a used pair 2010. They have features like liquid cooled horn drivers with titanium diaphragm, and replaceable woofer cones, which make them super durable and repairable at the 300 W level, but sound their best, with the least distortion, at the 1 W level I use in my living room. As I say, JBL is still making woofer + horn speakers in their pro line, but in Oklahoma, you will probably find shipping cheaper on the Peavey's. And of course, the crowd that think music and quality control were invented by Yamaha, will buy their products that have traveled across the Pacific.
As a temporary expedient to get the daughter practicing, I would cruise the charity resale shops to look for a pair of substantial home entertainment speakers. These cost $10-25 in the larger sizes. Be sure to check with an ohmmeter (with a cal check to eliminate low battery) that the speakers measure between 4 to 8 ohms. I see 6x9 car speakers at Salvation Army all the time, but they are always 4 ohms and would have to be stacked in series to make 8 ohm pairs, and enclosed. I found diy enclosure speakers of my friends sounded horrible when I was in college, and have resisted the temptation to build my own speakers. Every bit of plywood and damping fluff is important in speaker building, which is why a rigorous testing program and quality control program are important to a speaker builder. Peavey itself got the designs for the SP line when a couple of designers quit a speaker maker who refused to control the quality of the production product.
Most other participants in this forum are convinced only an organ builder can build an organ speaker. I find the prices on the resale market reflect this obsession. And as I say, the horn+woofer speakers are only good to 56 hz or 16' stop, whereas 32' organ stop goes to 20 hz. I have been a JS Bach organ fan since I heard it on a 5" radio speaker in 1963, and never heard a real 32' stop until I visited St Bartholemew in 2010, so I view 32' sounds as a frill, not a requirement for organ music. However, people that grew up in high churches in big cities find organ music without a 32' stop an anathema. Fine, if you have money. There are no bargains in subwoofers anywhere, even Peavey 118 subwoofers go for >$200 on the resale market unless repaired with non-Peavey drivers. Which will tear up if driven hard.
You may find the installer of your organ built resistor network "mixers" in the inputs of his 4 amp channels, to eliminate the need for 4 speakers. It is cheap to do if you have the knowledge, and the LDS church is known for supporting organ music in their small churches everywhere.
As far as cheap organ speakers, the hammond and conn tone cabinets are absolute rock bottom and show up on craigslist occasionally, trying to pretend they are leslie rotary speakers, often. PA equipment shows up on craigslist a lot but the bargains don't last very long, you have to check every day. I had to buy an entire band leaving the road setup to get these SP2-XT's, which was fine since I needed an amp and wanted a graphic equalizer & mixer, but you don't. And bargains were thicker on the ground in 2008 2009 anyway, when the economy was collapsing. Things are looking up, now. Old PA equipment goes to die at small dealers near lumberyards and junkyards and in trailer parks, usually associated with ads for used PA and guitar amps in the craigslist. I don't recommend the amps except to the repairman (the capacitors are overaged and will fail) but the used speakers are a better deal. Our used PA equip dealers are 100' down the road from the Peavey/Bose dealer across the street from 84 lumber, and a guy in a trailer park in Hilldale, KY. I'm sure something similar operates in Oklahoma. I don't recommend buying speakers on E-bay, the shipping cost makes that stupid. However, searchtempest.com searches craigslist and e-bay all categories, so it is useful for finding organ speakers that ended up in the craigslist furniture or antiques or free categories instead of musical instruments, so I use it.

[NoTalent]

Mark,
I'm not familiar with the 115 and can only guess how it works and how they got 4 speaker outputs from 2 amps. Those two amps may actually be 2 amps per chassis, meaning you actually have 4 amps. Or it could be some sort of splitter off one amp. But, if you are thinking about simply paralleling two outputs into one speaker, this can be a really bad idea, unless you have definite technical information that it's OK.

When you say "hooked it up to the FLUTE about 2/3 of the stops seemed to function", I would bet that if you hooked the speaker up to a different output, you will find the other 1/3 stops work but the original 2/3 don't.

Try looking for a board called the "Output". (You may find it by looking for a board with a few large, black circular things (about 1.5" in diameter and about 1" tall) on it), but I don't know that the 115 has these.) On the board, you may find slide switches labeled something like "Separate" vs "Mixed". If you set them to "Mixed", you may be able to mix those 4 channels down to 2 speakers. When trying this, you will have to experiment to find out which of the two outputs to connect to the speakers to get the mixed outputs.

By the way, if you haven't done so, I would definitely buy the Service Manual from Jan if, for no other reason, so that someone could fix the organ for you some day. It would probably also answer questions about whether or not the organ can be mixed down to 2 channels. And, his manuals are originals, which are definitely better than copies.

Greg

[marko3119]

Thank you both for your input into the search for speakers and how to hook them up. Indianajoe, do you think the Peavey speakers will work well for the mid range also? I was hoping to find something that didn't look quite so "PA" for my living room, but I am still open to the idea of the Peavey speakers. This organ only goes down to a 16' stop, so it sounds like these would handle the low end just fine. The internal amps seem to be two channels each. I don't know if the original installer added the speaker connections when it was set up in the LDS church or if it came that way from the factory. I have added some pictures under my profile page that show the connections. I wasn't sure how to get them into this message. That might answer a few questions though if anyone has seen something similar to this setup. The original installer is still working on organs in the area and I want to have him come to my house. I just wanted to get some speakers that were more proper before I called him. It sounds like from Greg's comment that I shouldn't attempt to hook two of these connections directly to each speaker, so I might have the installer come to my house and give me some advice, especially since he is the one that could have modified it, if in fact he did modifications. Thank you again for your input.

Mark

[indianajo]

The Peavey SP2 has a much more accurate midrange than you'll need for an organ. Organ sounds (not the synth ones) stop about 7000 hz. The SP2-XT is +-3 db 56 hz to 14000 hz. It is accurate enough it sounds like my Steinway piano, with the speakers surrounding the real (console) piano on poles. Piano is a very difficult sound to reproduce, organ difficulty is mainly limited to the extremely loud bass sounds in urban cathedrals. That is why I bought them, no speaker I'd heard before sounded anything like a real piano, except the Altec Lansing VOT's in 1966.
The PA speaker appearance does scream "bar music" since that is where you see it. When my wife came over and saw mine, she said it made her nostalgic for her days as a disco dance fan. There is a whole industry in the organ business hiding the speakers behind burlap or other open weave fabric screens. Churches often won't sell the speakers when they trash the Baldwin or Allen or Rogers organ, because the speakers are built in behind the nice looking burlap. I might point out, a big roll of burlap and 4 pieces of wood strip nailed together across the end of the room are rather cheap investment. Or, even nicer, a tapestry. One guy on diyaudio has the tapestry of the Paris Cluney Unicorns on the end of his room, with the speakers behind it.
Amps cannot be tied together at the speaker. A "mixer" separates two amp or other outputs with two resistors, typically 10 k ohm, than amplifies the resultant low level signal again to something you can again use. As I said, LDS church might have built one into your organ ahead of your amps. The parts to build a 2 input mixer are about $20 and the coast of a pro mixer with all the features bar bands want is about $350.
One thing to point out, in the PA market, orphan speakers where the other of a stereo pair was blown out, often sell at a discount, because bar bands want two of everything but the subwoofer. Since your organ has one sound channel and one subwoofer channel, mismatched single speakers seems to be what you are looking for. A Peavey number for a subwoofer is the 118.
Okay, here is a craigslist ad from Ok city today. http://oklahomacity.craigslist.org/msg/3426094320.html
Don't know what they sound like, but the price is right $125 Carvin horn + woofer speakers. Take a piano CD and an amp and some cords over and take a listen, is what I suggest. He might have an amp. An organ CD with some good bass would also be good to have, but Beethoven Appasionatta sonata has some low notes in it.