GEM exprerts... what is it?

[mashaffer]

http://southbend.craigslist.org/bar/3665105560.html

Seller doesn't seem to be able to give much info and I would like to know a little bit about it before driving an hour and a half to look at it. MIDI? AGO?

mike

[ShadyJoe]

This page has an organ that is very similar to the one you list:
http://www.picklepiano.com/browseusedorgans.php

[jbird604]

Galanti Praeludium II from the late 80's. Has MIDI and is fully AGO. This model has been rather thoroughly discussed on the forum just recently, so check this thread which is about the identical model with a Baldwin sticker on it. I play a Praeludium II at church on Sundays and offered some info about it in this thread:

http://www.organforum.com/forums/sho...ing-this-organ

[michaelhoddy]

This is an "early" PII, probably from around 1988-89. It has the early-style key cheeks and division/control labels.

[jbird604]

Best I can tell this is identical to the one I play at church. What are the differences in the later versions, Michael? I have seen other references to this but don't know the details.

Interesting that two of these have gone up on craigslist in such a short time and both for nearly nothing. With just a little TLC and restoration these make great practice organs. And good MIDI consoles too.

[mashaffer]

Thanks guys, will try to take a look next week.

mike

[OrgansR4Me]

This is also very equivalent to the Wurlitzer badged Viscount I've been working on. I'd consider it a very good buy for a home organ at only $300.

[mashaffer]

The intent would be to use it as a MIDI for VPO for a small church. Alternately if I find a better console I could switch and put the better one in the church and use this one at home for practice. I can't tell from the pictures, how many expression pedals are there? Also has anyone ever tried to add a third manual to one of these? It looks pretty difficult. How do the pedals connect? It is possible that we will not need to use the built in tone generation at all as I am primarily looking for the MIDI capabilities.

mike

[michaelhoddy]

One expression pedal, one crescendo. I don't recall if they transmit MIDI volume, but my gut says no. MIDI program change is transmitted to and from the pistons, but not to/from the stops.

John, the major differences between early and late PII's are that the later ones had "wood" key cheeks, and any badging (divisions, reverb control, etc) is brass rather than white plastic. I seem to recall that the vinyl veneer was better as well. Late models also got the pedalboard with silicone microswitches versus the crazy unreliable magnetic reed switch shutter system, and fiberglass versus phenolic circuit boards.

Some early PII's and many PI's also had a spring reverb instead of the later digital reverb.

[OrgansR4Me]

Unless a person is seeking an Allen type German sound, the Italian instruments have a nice gentle church tone. There would be no need to modify the organ to make is suitable for church. A recent post of mine gave some You Tube samples you might want to hear. I'll try to locate and copy that link.

See page 2 of the thread from http://www.organforum.com/forums/sho...light=Viscount

[mashaffer]

Oh, BTW, I won't have much time when/if I go by to check it out so can someone tell me where the MIDI connectors are so I don't have to waste time looking for them?

mike

[michaelhoddy]

They're below the keyboards on little plastic panels nestled up against the top of the vertical expression/toe stud/speaker panel. I seem to remember that they're on the one on the left, but I could have it backwards.

[Kurzweil]

Seems like one is unlikely to go too badly wrong for $300. That's a steal, even for use in a VPO.

[mashaffer]

Well, I bought it. I hope to pick it up next week. I was in the area for a steroid shot in my back so stopped and played with it a little bit. SO here are my impressions...

- The console is a little bit scuffed up in places but a little Finish Restorer or Old English should take care of that if need be.

- The pedal board is AGO (I was a bit unsure about that as in the pics I couldn't tell and I have seen pictures of Praeludia on the net that had flat pedal boards of the European style). Some of the pedals were a little clunky and clattered a bit as was mention in another thread on these organs but I suspect that issue can probably be fixed pretty easily

- The MIDI out worked as described by other users. Manuals and pedals provide midi out as do the pistons for 1-5. Interestingly the set, GC and "0" pistons did not seem to generate messages. There are pistons for A/B on both sides of the row of general pistons which I take to be for two separate memory banks for the pistons. The one on the left side seemed to generate messages while the one on the right did not. I forgot to check the foot pistons. Interestingly each piston press generated a flurry of messages (all the same IIRC) so I suspect it sends messages as long as the piston is held down. As others have mentioned the expression pedals do not send midi nor does the transpose switch.

- FIY the upper manual is channel 1, lower is channel 2, and pedals are channel 4.

- All notes on all manuals and all stops appear to be in working order and the Swell and Crescendo pedals work as they should.

- The organ has internal speakers which are nothing to write home about but with the reverb on it does a credible job if rather hollow and tinny especially on the reeds. If anyone is considering one of these as a practice organ it should be quite adequate for that as you can pretty much imagine how the real pipe would sound. It is even possible that the internal voices could be used with decent external speakers in the organ chambers and a good reverb unit. Never the less my interest is in the MIDI.

- The Voix Celeste is not a single detuned rank but a stand alone stop with Celeste effect.

- The built in reeds on the manuals are not really all that bad. I played a short call and echo trumpet fanfare on Swell and Great and it didn't sound bad.

- The manuals are backward in that the top is called the Great and the bottom is called the Swell but of course this doesn't matter for MIDI use.

- The pedals connect via. a pigtail with a computer type "D" connector with the switches all contained within the pedal assembly. This is nice because one could add a third manual by raising the entire console and placing the new manual underneath. I will probably do it another way but it is nice to have the option.

- The stop rail is quite wide and appears to be a separate piece. One of the possible options that this suggests (depending on how things are connected) is that the stop rail could be removed and tipped up from the bottom to be more horizontal allowing room to put in a third midi keyboard. If that geometry works out it might solve the expression pedal problem as well. I have a "midiman" keyboard that is thin and has loads of knobs and sliders that send midi messages. If I could connect linear slide pots to the expression pedals and wire them in instead of the internal pots on some of those I could kill two birds with one stone.

I think this is going to work out. Will let you know what I find when I tear into it. Anyone know where to get service and users manuals for it?

mike

[jbird604]

Nice assessment. I would add that the swell and great manuals can be either inverted or normal position. There is a small switch on a panel under the keyboards on the right that inverts the manuals. Also, the piston to the right of the presets is "AP" and refers to "auto-pedal" ... the one on the left is "A/B" and toggles between the two memories for the five pistons.

The toe studs have some interesting functions such as "plenum" registrations and "reeds" ... could be useful but I never use them because I can't see them and the indicator lights are oddly right over the toe studs, so you can't see them without ducking your head down there!

If you have the old clattery pedal switching mechanism ("shutters" that open and close to expose the magnet to the reed switch) -- the shutter springs are prone to breaking, but someone came up with an ingenious fix on the one at my church before I came. The shutters have been lashed directly to the pedal sticks by means of some fabric about 1/2" wide. Now the shutters don't need a separate spring and as a side benefit they make less noise!

The user's manual and a four or five page technical manual will be all the documentation available, and it is sketchy. I have both, but the sheets are too big to copy in a standard copier. You might get them from General Music, a guy named Artie still answers the phone (sometimes). If you can't get originals, I could try scanning mine, but as I said the sheets are bigger than regular paper and you'd have to piece them together.

There are a number of things you can do with the little knobs and switches underneath the keyboards, so you should play around with them and note the changes.

BTW, it does sound better with an external amp and some better speakers. At my church it plays through a nice 200 watt professional amp and a set of rather hefty speakers that I put together. The sound of individual stops is quite good, but it gets muddy when a lot of stops are drawn. Too bad they didn't make provisions for outputting several discrete channels of audio, which would have been easy given that the tone generator cards send about 10 channels into the mixer board.

Good luck!