Moving a Baldwin D422

[tpyoder]

Can someone tell met the weight of a Baldwin D422 digital organ. I am moving mine from Washington, DC to mid-coast Maine. Burr!

[circa1949]

Sorry for asking you a trivial question like this...but I'm curious, did you buy that from Gordon Keller when they were going out of business in the late 2000s? I can't remember exactly when...maybe 2007, I saw it listed for sale somewhere. The auction after his death was in 2009 and IIRC there were other instruments in that auction but not the Baldwin. I had wondered at the time why they still had a model from the 1990s in stock, whether it was in the family's personal collection, on consignment, or had never been sold in the first place and was 'new'.
Don't forgot to pack your snow shovels haha. I think most consoles of that size are well under 1000 lbs and pose no particular challenge to professional movers; the speakers, depending on how many you have, could start adding up of course.

EDIT: oops! should have googled my username + "gordon keller" first: http://www.organforum.com/forums/sho...0-422D-Baldwin
I don't think I saw your response to me at the time. I guess if you still have the organ you were able to satisfactorily resolve the speaker situation. Well - good luck with your move.

[jbird604]

It is indeed a heavy one. As I recall, not only is it big, possibly over 36" deep at the arms, and quite wide to accomodate the big drawknob towers, but it's made of rather thick and bulky-looking material. It also has more "guts" inside than today's digital organs, with a heavy transformer and complex power supply in the bottom, and several stacks of circuit boards in some kind of cages on the main shelf.

I don't have the service manual at home with me, but I'm guessing this one is heavier than the average console. Less than 1000 pounds for sure, but it might be over 500. When I moved mine from the church that was discarding it, four strong men picked it up and loaded it into a pickup truck for me. When I sold it, a moving company did the chore. So I've not picked it up myself, but it does look heavy.

Looking at that old thread, I see that you were looking for the amps and speakers. I must have missed that thread when you posted. Over the years I've had a number of late 80's and early 90's Baldwins come through the shop, and have collected several of those ungainly 5-channel amplifier units (EA-5?) that Baldwin used for various models. Not sure that I have a working one, though! And they are so heavy it would surely cost a bundle to ship.

IIRC, the output panel has some options. You can actually play this organ through the basic five channels -- four of them for upper frequencies and one for bass. That arrangement compromises the organ a little, since the preferred setup is to connect to the 10-channel output terminals, with 8 high-frequency channels and two bass channels. On top of either of these there is a special output just for the 32' pedal stop. However, it is OK to simply jumper the output of the 32' channel directly to one of the other bass outputs and let that stop sound through one of the smaller woofer cabinets in a home setting.

The stock model speaker that Baldwin provided for the 32' channel is a behemoth having (I think) an 18" woofer in a cabinet that must be 15 or 20 cu ft with a slotted port. That thing can indeed pump air and create a realistic 32' stop in a very large building. But if you are in a small room and only need a reasonable amount of bass, the 32' can mix in with the other bass.

BTW, the built-in crossover system operates at about 200 Hz, directing everything below that from all divisions into the bass channels. The upper-frequency speakers that Baldwin supplied contained a 5" driver and a dome tweeter for each channel. The bass cabinets (other than the 32' cabinet) were quite compact and each one had a foam-surround 12" woofer coupled to a matching passive radiator. And they worked pretty well, though every one of these that I've seen has needed new woofers and new passive radiators, since the foam rots out or else the bass is really too much for the 12" driver and destroys it prematurely.

I'd love to know how you finally got yours hooked up. When I had mine in the house, I came out of the 5-channel terminal set into a common PA mixer, mixing the four upper channels down to two. I mixed the bass channel and the 32' channel into both outputs equally, and sent the resulting stereo signal into a 100 watt 2-channel amp and a pair of good speakers. It was adequate for my small music room.

[searchinferu]

Our Maine bound friend seems to have departed the site....this one anyway.

The 422 I was interested in buying was up his way. Perhaps it was the same fella. He only returned a couple of my emails, so I wasn't exactly about to send a cashier's check and hope for the best. But, lets give this fella credit. Perhaps he bought it from the other guy, right? Maybe not.