Incessant ALLEN 120 C Questions....

[buzzyreed]

So just thinking about the relative cost benefits of the Harrison Labs MOS 1 Midi converter and the Artisan Organ convert and I wonder if the Artisan Organ converter would be a better idea because there is NO soldering and I can use it to add the pistons to midi without having to buy $300 more of the Harrison boards.

Anyone have any advice as to which is probably better for an 'artistic personality' with no patience for mechanical or electronic things?

[buzzyreed]

Also, would the Artisan thing work, since as far as I can tell there isn't really a one to one relationship between keys and key wires, i.e. it must have a matrix or something else going on there that may make anything but the Harrison thing impossible.

[jbird604]

Wish I could comment on this one, Buzzy, but I don't have any experience with either of these. It's just not simple to MIDI an old Allen, but people do it all the time. Please report on your experience.

[Admin]

The Artisan system does not track the transposer as it's connected directly to the keyboard matrix. It's also not clear whether it's intended to be used with organ's existing keyboard matrix scanning hardware or as replacement for it. If it's the latter, the assumption is you're discarding the existing tone generation system rather than supplementing it with Midi. You need to explain that you're supplementing organ and see what they say. Finally, I'm not sure where you get the idea there's no soldering with Artisan. Don't you have a 17 conductor cable running between each keyboard and the encoder? The encoder has terminal blocks, but I think you're going to have solder the keyboard side, no?

Stop control is a whole different problem and discussion.

[buzzyreed]

The Artisan midi boards use clip on spring loaded connectors so you only have to strip the wires. This, of course, assumes that I'll just tear out the old tone generators, once I'm sure I can get the new system working in time for the Christmas Concert Season. I wouldn't mind soldering on the keyboard, etc., but as a kid I had some very frustrating experiences with my poor soldering technique frying transistors on the homemade circuit boards of the robots I'd design and built. I'm getting too old to worry about things like this. I just want to practice and perform, not burn myself and components with a soldering iron.