Rodgers voicing pre-digital

[organman95]

Alright, I'm just giving some general info here, looking for input.

I played at a church recently that has a Rodgers. Forgot to look at the model number. 3 manual, has an indicator for crescendo only, all lighted drawknobs/pistons (I HATE those). Full set of couplers, 16/8/4, on the right jamb, had this big power switch that lights up when pressed, with a tuning knob and 'options' knob (what is that?) next to the switch. Sound was absolutely terrible, mixtures VERY shrill, and every few notes or so something would sounds WAY off, tired to figure out what stop and the priest told me "Give it up. We've had five people try to figure out." No MIDI that I could find, so I'm thinking late analog? Also has some orchestral tabs (I didn't check them). If it is analog, is there anything that can be done to fix the terrible keys/voices? If I were the church, I'd replace that ASAP.

[Leisesturm]

Alright, I'm just giving some general info here, looking for input.

I played at a church recently that has a Rodgers. Forgot to look at the model number. 3 manual, has an indicator for crescendo only, all lighted drawknobs/pistons (I HATE those). Full set of couplers, 16/8/4, on the right jamb, had this big power switch that lights up when pressed, with a tuning knob and 'options' knob (what is that?) next to the switch. Sound was absolutely terrible, mixtures VERY shrill, and every few notes or so something would sounds WAY off, tired to figure out what stop and the priest told me "Give it up. We've had five people try to figure out." No MIDI that I could find, so I'm thinking late analog? Also has some orchestral tabs (I didn't check them). If it is analog, is there anything that can be done to fix the terrible keys/voices? If I were the church, I'd replace that ASAP.

I don't know what you want us to say. Five people have already had a go. I'd say you're right. Time to pitch the thing in the tip and start looking for a benefactor to commission a ~$1M pipe organ of comparable resources from a top line builder.

[organman95]

None of them were Rodgers techs. I don't know anything about the analogs, other than they used oscillators. Beyond that, I'm lost.

[toodles]

3-Manual Rodgers with tuning and Options knobs is probably an 890 or a 925; both are 1980's vintage, and quite complete stoplists.

The "options" knob selects one of three different Carillon tunings: major, minor, and Flemish. The difference is very audible.

The organ can be voiced, and it can, indeed, sound horrible if the voicing isn't adjusted right. The good news is that if properly voiced, it can sound very musical, though it probably won't fool anyone into thinking it is a pipe organ.

I don't know what "sounds way off" means. It could be tuning or it could be a distorted output from the oscillator. I believe either of these models has dual-level voicing accessible from the front of the console if the enable switches are set to the accessible position. This permits setting many of the voices to a "loud" or "soft" setting, and it may be that mixtures just need to be set to soft. It could be everything else is set to soft and the mixtures are set to loud--that would give you shrill mixtures. It could also be it doesn't have a good set of speakers, or perhaps they are damaged.

In any case, except for total failure or catastrophic failure of the computer control system (which does not sound like the case) this organ is very serviceable. You just need to find someone who knows how to work with these organs. You dont' say where you live in Michigan, but you can look for a tech on the MITA Techs website: http://www.mitatechs.org/Service-Locator/

The analog organ produces sounds on a note-by-note basis, so anything wrong with a single note can be adjusted, if necessary, though it might require changing some component values.

[jbird604]

Depending on the model, as Toodles says, there may be a choice of loud or soft level for the mixtures. The model 840 is one that has that feature. If it happens to be an 890 or 900 or 925, these models have an individual thumbwheel leveling control for every stop. (Almost every stop that is. A handful of the stops have to be adjusted right on the keyers or on the output board.) These leveling controls are all lined up along the left edge of a big board called the "air sound board." If you remove the back cover, this is a board right about the center of the swing-out panel, at eye level more or less as you crouch behind the console.

It might seem a simple thing to just go along fiddling with the thumbwheels to get each stop the level you want, but in reality, you must first set the overall level of the various unit ranks (of which there are about 12 or 15 in that series) by adjusting the correct pot on the output board. That sets the level (generally) for the 8' member of a chorus, then you set the levels of the higher and lower pitched stops drawn from the same unit.

I played on a Rodgers of that type at church for a year or two, and have sold several of them, and I'll say that it can be a very nice organ if properly installed and properly voiced. There are some astoundingly beautiful stops, particularly reeds. And the flutes and principals can be adjusted not only for the basic tone color but also for how much chiff, air puff, and airsound they contain. So a very flexible organ that benefits from a professional setup by someone who understands the system.

You might try to just turn down the volume of the mixtures to see if that helps. They should be clearly marked on the air sound board, a knob for each of them, if it's one of those three models. Adjusting the pot alters the level of all the individual notes that make up a given mixture stop.

It's also possible that you have an oscillator or two that has gone way off pitch. Since there are only a couple of ranks of oscillators driving the 12 or 15 ranks of keyers, and since the unit design means that a given oscillator is actually used all over the organ in differently pitched ranks. So just one or two sour oscillators can make the organ sound incredibly wretched. Tuning is quite simple and requires nothing more than a free cell phone app to use as a pitch reference. There are two unison ranks -- one that is very long, from note #001 (which is the bottom C of the 32' stop) up through note #85 (top C of the 2' stops). The other unison rank only has four or five octaves, and is used on certain stops to keep all the ranks from being in electronic lockstep. then there is the celeste rank, which can be tuned by ear, just sharp enough on each note to produce a pleasant beat against the unison stop that matches it.

Unless the church is prepared to spend $100K or more for a suitable new organ to replace it, they really ought to call in a tech, even if it costs a thousand dollars, to have a thorough maintenance job, which will include tuning and leveling of the stops. In a pinch, you might be able to make it a lot better by getting it in tune yourself and then carefully adjusting a few of the levels.

BTW, all the level pots in a Rodgers should have a factory default marking. At the factory, once they get an organ all balanced and sounding good, they run a marker along all the rows of pots so they can be easily reset to the factory setting if they get messed up. A creative voicer will often feel that a given stop needs to be slightly louder or softer than the factory set it, in order to work with the environment the organ is installed in. But in many cases, the voicing will actually be improved by returning everything to the factory setting, as someone who is not truly qualified may have tinkered with the levels.