Rodgers model 830 LDK

[Kansas]

I have come across a Rodgers model 830 in its original installation. The original congregation had sold the building to another congregation that does not use the organ at all. The present congregation would like to sell the organ however, I have no idea if it has any value or what to offer? It's location is in the balcony so it would require a Genie lift to remove and the stairwell is too narrow to take down the steps. This organ has all the bells & whistles to include approximately 4 s-100 amps, 3 large Walker credenza type speakers, a large horn speaker for the reeds, cymbelstern, 3 ranks of pipes, reservoir and pancake blower. It is functional at this time but given its age. (approx. 1978) and the work required to remove it from the balcony. I would really like to have some opinions on it's value to make an honest offer given I will have to do the work. I believe this organ is comparable to a 220 II. The pedalboard needs all new up & down stops.
My second question is: Can this organ be installed with just two channels of audio or does it require all four?
I would appreciate hearing from anyone with an opinion on its value, if any and if I should go for it or leave it alone?
Thank you!

[toodles]

This organ more likely dates from around 1988 than 1978 as it was introduced in the early to mid 1980's, but it is old, and analog technology. It's a much larger stoplist than the 220-II, and has a little bit more tonal resources--the celeste rank is a full 61 notes, and the ensemble oscillators are at least 60 notes, perhaps 61. The 220-II has 49 and 48 notes respectively for the celeste and ensemble oscillators.

But it has a lot more in terms of keyers: swell principal, swell flute, swell unit trompette, swell vox humana, swell pulse keyer (deriving gamba, echo gamba, oboe and festival trumpet); great principal, great flute, great unit krummhorn, and great unit tuba. Celestes are principal celeste on the swell (labelled viola celeste) and flute celeste on the great.

Harp and chimes are standard, harpsichord was optional as was a glockenspiel (real metal bars); The organ has a 32' reed, in addition to 32' Contra Bourdon and 32' Contra Principal. This was one of the largest stoplists of any 2-manual electronic organ that I know of.

Not considering the pipes, removing it from the balcony makes the value of the organ itself almost nil, unfortunately. If it were on a ground floor, maybe $1,000 to $2,000 considering the need to rebuild the pedals. The pipes & chests might be worth $2,000 to $3,000 if they are in excellent condition.

If you can swing $2,000 I would say you were getting a good deal and the church is getting a good deal. If they want to bear the expense of moving to the ground floor, then you might offer another $1,000 or $2,000.

This is a microprocessor controlled organ, and should that system fail (not common, but possible) it becomes only valuable as a virtual organ controller--just a few hundred dollars.

I would never recommend mixing this organ down to 2 channels--you'll suck the life out of the sound of the electronic divisions. It can, however, be used with much more compact speakers than what it has.

I own one of these, and am working on building my own speakers, using 6-1/2 inch woofers and 1 inch tweeters for most of the channels, plus a separate subwoofer. It needs to have 5 manual channels (where you only need response down to about 60 Hz) plus a "pedal" subwoofer channel. The amps are all contained in the console.

If you get it, abandon the separate horn channel for the trompette--it would be hideously loud in a home. The JBL driver used on that speaker, though, sells for a few hundred dollars on eBay. Here's the brochure and a brochure on the horn speaker--about 45 pounds of its weight is the driver!

Oh, you'll need to add a digital reverb system but that's easy, and it might make sense to put a mic on the pipes to reverb those if you can avoid feed back. I hope you have a really big room for it.

[jbird604]

1986-88 is just about the sweet spot for Rodgers analogs. By that time they were doing everything imaginable with analog technology to compete with Allen's hugely successful ADC digital line -- many more separate keyer boards than the old analogs, so less sharing of ranks between divisions, improved keying for smoother attacks, grand schemes for adding adjustable chiff, air puff, random motion, and air sound to the steady-state tones, really good reed voicing that rivaled digital, elaborate MIDI features, extra nice key actions. Over the years we've had several Rodgers organs from that time period pass through the shop, and they have been quite impressive. (And this was before the final gasp in the very late 80's when they were totally running out of steam and shipping analog organs that sometimes seemed to have been unfinished, or maybe skipped right over the quality control department!)

All that said, I can only ditto what toodles says above. Even a newer organ of that size has little value in such a situation where you're going to spend a LOT of money getting it removed. The cost and difficulty of that task truly zeroes out the value it would otherwise have. It's just a wash -- you remove something that they don't need and make some space for whatever they want to put there, and you get a "kit" of stuff that you "might" be able to re-assemble into a decent working organ.

To install it in a home you'll have a ton of work to do. As toodles says, building or acquiring speakers of a manageable size is a necessisty, along with digital reverb. Even at that, these big old organs were made to sound good in large reverberant spaces and are not ideal for a home setting. The sound is sweet when allowed to roll around and bloom in a big church, but not pretty right out of the speakers, even with all the improvements they had made in analog by that time.

The pipes might or might not be worth something. Too many of the Rodgers analogs with pipes had really terrible pipework, really terrible. We have had to disable the pipe units on many of these as they have become untunable, unstable, with more and more ciphers, dead notes, sour notes, and other problems. So you may find that decent pipes were used in this one, or you may find the cheapest and sorriest pipes you ever saw. Either way, you actually need a pipe installer and tuner to make the pipes sound decent in a home setting, not to mention the lack of sweetening reverb.

I sure wouldn't offer much for this thing. Allen organs of that same period and even later are coming up for sale or for the taking, and they are far better in terms of build quality and technology and still have manufacturer support, another thing that these old Rodgers organs are very short on.

Still, an interesting and intriguing project ...

[Kansas]

There is some discrepancy here as this organ is somewhat smaller than the 830 brochure I received from Toodles. Not a lot but less couplers, pistons & it has a practice panel underneath the keyboards like was supplied with some of the older models like the 100 and 220 II. From what I was told, this organ was in a Rodgers showroom. I got the 1978 date from a list I copied online from Jan. The model is not a 830 but a 850 LDM. Sorry, my mistake! It does not have internal amplifiers but SS-100's. I'm sure this makes a big difference in value. I'm sorry again as I just had cataract surgery and my eyesight is a little off but getting better everyday.

[toodles]

The 850 was essentially a renamed 220-II, but with a stop change or two. I wasn't aware it was offered with a pipe supplement, but Rodgers started offering pipes around that time, so it is certainly a possibility. It makes the organ a bit less valuable and a little older than the 830. As Jbird indicates, it is still a "project" organ. One thing though, it probably doesn't have a microprocessor control, meaning the sound producing circuits are always repairable. The combination action, though, is not always repairable. If it works, they are very reliable, but if the memory fails, the memory can't be repaired.

Considering all the cost and trouble to move this organ, you might consider this Allen of similar vintage: https://columbiamo.craigslist.org/ms...264663043.html

It's an early Allen digital, but it's got AGO pedals, and Allen pedal boards are about as good as they get in the organ industry. Still needs digital reverb, and it doesn't have a combination action (just some presets) but you'd probably be happier with it. Especially at the price. You could add an independent combination action at considerable expense if that is necessary, but it would probably still cost less than the Rodgers considering moving expenses and repairs.

As to Rodgers pipes, they did some good ones and some bad ones. You'd have to listen to them to know.

- - - Updated - - -

Note that the Allen mentioned is self-contained. (The speakers on the stop board make it obvious.)

[Kansas]

I have an organist friend who would like to have the pipework. From what I heard and saw it is quality European style pipework. It has an independent flute of 73 pipes, a principal that plays at 8' & 4' of 73 pipes,& independent 2' principal of 61 pipes. No ciphers and all play on 2 separate chests. He would like to add these to his pipe organ as a antiphonal division. I think that would work just fine.
This 850 is just too old and too large for anything except another church.
Do you have a brochure you can send me on this 850? Just curious about the specs on it.
I have a church looking at this time but it may be too big unless the amplification can be cut down. I have my eye on another ADC Allen and would prefer that over a MOS I organ
Thank you for your input.

[toodles]

Here is the Cambridge 850 brochure. Again, this organ did not offer pipe augmentation as a standard option.

Note that there were also very similar models that did offer pipe augmentation as standard models in larger 2-manual designs.

1. The Specification 250, one of the original pipe-augmented series organs.
2. The Cambridge 870.
3. The Alexandria 820.
4. The Salzburg 825.

All of these 4 models included a floating Positiv division which played the pipes.

With regards to pipes, it really doesn't matter who made them--after all, tin and lead don't "know" who melted them and turned them into pipes. What matters is the tonal finishing, and some Rodgers installations included very good tonal finishing, and some dealers didn't pay for this to be done. Thus the variable quality of the pipe voicing. Rodgers used direct electric action, and these are simple devices, so you're not likely to run into issues with those no matter who built the chests.

[Kansas]

This model has a blank drawknob that has to be pulled in order for the pipes to speak and even though there is a 8' principal and a 8' Flute the pipes start at tenor C and there are no notes played in the bottom octave 1-12.

[toodles]

Is there a knob to adjust the tuning of the electronics to match the pipes? That was standard for all Rodgers organs with factory planned pipes. If it's not there, I'd say someone augmented this organ in the field.

[Kansas]

Yes, there is a tuning knob.

[radagast]

How does this compare to a Rodgers 205, like the one on Ebay with pipes?

[toodles]

That's difficult top say since I'm not sure we know exactly what model this is. But the 205 has two ranks of pipes that start at tenor C ( so they start at the 4 ft pitch) and they only are 49 notes in length. So in any case, the pipes on this organ are a much smaller set.

If it is an 850, 820, or 825, then it's a bigger base electronic model, with a 32 ft pedal stop. The 205 has just one electronic flute, one principal, trumpet, and krummhorn. Any of the other models mentioned should have at least two of those electronic flue ranks, plus the trumpet and krummhorn.