Any way to disable pistons on AG3200?

[markn]

Does anyone know a setting on the Ahlborn-Galanti AG3200 that would disable the pistons from having any effect on the organ's stops and couplers, but still send out the same MIDI messages? This is for triggering Hauptwerk combinations with organ pistons while letting Hauptwerk send MIDI to control the organ's drawknob and tab lights. (Better not to ask...it's complicated. :) ) Thank you.

[Leisesturm]

I have to think that there is no such setting. If you don't want the pistons to activate any stops on the organ... don't set any stops on them? If you want (why?) Hauptwerk to control the organ, wire the pistons into Hauptwerk? What are you trying to accomplish? Try us. I'm asking

[markn]

Sure, here goes. The pistons clear the organ stops when they don't have a set registration. The pistons are triggering Hauptwerk's combinations, but they have the side-effect of clearing the console lights. Now the long story: ☺

I can't reach the touchscreen while playing, so I have the console pistons control Hauptwerk's combinations and the console stops/etc control Hauptwerk's stops/etc. Mostly works fine since I set the organ's pistons empty and the organ's audio output off. With over 20 sample sets, it isn't practical to set the organ's pistons to try to light console stops that match the registrations on the sample sets. So, console stops are all unlighted unless I have just hand-registered or hit a piston and then added some stops by hand.

It works okay for me this way, but there are two limitations. To turn off stops or couplers by hand after using a piston, I have to pull and then push the drawknob so MIDI stop off will be sent. And a lot of sample sets' stop states are hard to read on a 23" monitor sitting on top of the console. There isn't room to the sides with the stop jambs, so it's hard to glance up and figure out the current registration.

So now I'm experimenting with Haupterk sending MIDI output to the console to control its drawknob and tab lights, which Haupterk does very well. It sends the stop/etc changes when a Hauptwerk combination is triggered by a console piston. But the piston clears all the console lights first because it contains an empty registration, then sends its MIDI message to trigger the Hauptwerk combination. Then Hauptwerk sends messages that turn on the lights that were added to the previous registration, so the console now shows the added stops and couplers.

If the piston didn't change the console stops and just sent out its MIDI message, this would work. Or if Hauptwerk had an option to send out the full registration instead of the deltas, that would work but probably isn't useful enough to ask for software enhancements.

Using the combination system on the organ doesn't send out MIDI stop on/off messages, so that isn't an option.

Thanks.

[markn]

Had to give up on using HW MIDI output to control lighted drawknobs and stop tabs. I really liked it, but on a bigger sample set, Hereford 67 extended, hitting a piston during a heavy passage always leaves several ciphers -- lost note off messages. The MIDI in and out are on different MIDI controllers on the organ and on different audio interfaces and USBs and PCI slots on the computer. I think the bottleneck is in the organ's computer. No ciphers before trying this.