This speaker was Saville's standard. William Barnes mentions it briefly in one of the later editions of his book on pipe organs. Saville organs always sounded very good to me.
Seriously, I have only played 2 Saville organs in the past--one in Caribou, ME (LDS Church), and one in Peoria, IL (can't remember church). I was impressed with both of them. These pictures are informative, because I never saw the business end of the organ (meaning speakers), so this is great information to have.
If I can find out exactly where it is, I may be interested (near relatives?). It even has a 32' Pedal Reed!!! (Michael drooling)
Thank you for sharing this post.
Michael
Attached Files
Way too many organs to list, but I do have 5 Allens:
I always liked the sound of my Saville. I didn't get the Sonotubes, on which the speakers were mounted, from the church but it works OK in a home setting without them. Mine has 24 channels of power amps driving 24 speakers. Right now it needs new caps in the power supplies but I plan to do that this winter.
That is one heck of a console on this instrument and even if you eventually stripped out the analog tone generation boards to turn it into a Hauptwerk or similar MIDI-based console, it certainly has lots of stop tabs, pistons and toe studs! There are tabs marked for control of antiphonal speakers, so there is even more to this organ than in the photos.
Larry is my name; Allen is an organ brand. Allen RMWTHEA.3 with RMI Electra-Piano; Allen 423-C+Gyro; Britson Opus OEM38; Steinway AR Duo-Art 7' grand piano, Mills Violano Virtuoso with MIDI; Hammond 9812H with roll player; Roland E-200; Mason&Hamlin AR Ampico grand piano, Allen ADC-5300-D with MIDI, Allen MADC-2110.
A good friend was a Saville Rep. I have lots of sales lit. If anyone is looking for something in particular, let me know and I will see if I have it. Was a great organ in its day.
Saville was located in one of the Northern suburbs of Chicago. They built church/classical organs exclusively using individual oscillators. More oscillators in any Saville than in the average Rodgers or even Allen organ. I only heard one extensively in a church that my parents attended, and it always sounded extremely good to my ears. I don't know if I was fooled into thinking it was a pipe organ, but it sounded good enough that I didn't even think about it.
In their last days they were working on a digital organ design based on Fourier analysis and control of specific harmonics. I don't think that design made it to market. I know about that because Thomas Organ (also headquartered near Chicago) hired two people from Saville and considered buying the rights to the digital design.
AOB was the successor to Saville if not as a legal entity, at least to the design approach.
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