The truth,...does the current owner of Rodgers still support older Rodgers organs?

[Dewey643]

I'm probably touching off a potentially hot topic,...but I'm seeking the truth here. You can't really rely on Facebook organ groups for the truth,..at least not all the time it seems. Okay,..my question;...Does the current owner of Rodgers organs still supply service parts for older Rodgers organs? One person will say "Yes,..they still support them",...and another will say "No,...you can't get parts for the older organs." Who's right? Who's wrong? Who am I to believe? And one other question,...is a new Rodgers organ really a Johannus with Rodgers name plate? I'm hearing that a lot,too,it seems!

[kennyrayandersen]

I think there are a fair number of parts available, but I'm my personal experience dealing with the corporate offices is they were pretty much useless. Furthermore, unless you can salvage or repair existing hardware, it's not even feasible to repair an older organ with new parts (my opinion) depending on what part you need.

For instance if you need the main board in a 90 Rodgers replaced it will be just shy of $3K. If the perfectly working organ is worth say $4K tops it doesn't make much sense. In my case my Rodgers had been hit by lightening so they're were at least 2+ boards that needed to be replaced.. not only would it cost more to fix than it was worth, for a fraction of the repair cost the organ can be converted to a VPO (virtual pipe organ), and that's what I ended up doing.

The other thing Rodgers isn't helpful with is they won't even give you any historical data you might need. My organ didn't come with a bench so I had to build one. I couldn't even get dimensions of any kind from them so ended up having to scale things and get some dimensions out of some manuals. There would not have been anything high tech or proprietary about a bench, but they just won't give out anything to help the customer with their organs. I called maybe 3 times and never got anywhere with any of the issues I had -- this forum was 100 times more useful than the company. Their local rep is also worthless, so the biggest issue is if you have a bad local rep you are screwed.

The other takeaway is that it's not cheap to fix any of these unless you have the ability to actually troubleshoot circuit boards and fix those yourself, and that may hold true over all the manufacturers. In the end I suspect most older organs will just be converted to VPOs as it's more cost effective and flexible.

[Leisesturm]

I think there are a fair number of parts available, but I'm my personal experience dealing with the corporate offices is they were pretty much useless. Furthermore, unless you can salvage or repair existing hardware, it's not even feasible to repair an older organ with new parts (my opinion) depending on what part you need.

For instance if you need the main board in a 90 Rodgers replaced it will be just shy of $3K. If the perfectly working organ is worth say $4K tops it doesn't make much sense. In my case my Rodgers had been hit by lightening so they're were at least 2+ boards that needed to be replaced.. not only would it cost more to fix than it was worth, for a fraction of the repair cost the organ can be converted to a VPO (virtual pipe organ), and that's what I ended up doing.

The other thing Rodgers isn't helpful with is they won't even give you any historical data you might need. My organ didn't come with a bench so I had to build one. I couldn't even get dimensions of any kind from them so ended up having to scale things and get some dimensions out of some manuals. There would not have been anything high tech or proprietary about a bench,

I can sympathise with your apparent frustration with Rodgers but I can't really say that I understand it. Around 2002, I owned a 94 Chevy Cavalier. I was not the first owner. You clearly were not the first owner of the Rodgers. How much support should Rodgers have given you? How much support should General Motors have given me? In my case it was the heater core that failed, completely flooding the interior of my car with radiator fluid. Completely by accident I had moved to Michigan with the car and had made friends with an employee (engineer) at Ford who liked to tinker with cars as a hobby. We went to a junkyard, found a similar model, pulled the heater core from it and installed it into my car. At no time did I ever think it was worth expecting that Chevy still made parts compatible with a 94 Cavalier nor that, even if one was available that it would be worth buying and putting into a Cavalier with over 150K miles on it.

A Rodgers is AGO compliant so any AGO compliant organ bench would work with it. You didn't need to build a bench, you could have probably gotten one for nothing by asking around in the right places. I have a legacy European digital that does not work. The company (Eminent) has gone through similar changes of ownership and such to Rodgers. Help with legacy instruments such as mine is extremely limited, so much so as to be essentially useless. So ... VPO conversion is the only way forward. Its not just Rodgers. You already know that. Clearly you possess the awareness but clearly you also think it should be different from the reality. I don't know, its just never occurred to me to be surprised or frustrated by companies moving on from their legacy products.

[toodles]

Electronic organs are supposed to have a much longer life than cars, so expecting to be able to service them for 30 to 50 years after installation does not seem unreasonable to me--they were sold with that intention. Arguably the leader in electronic organs in the US is Allen, and they provide parts and service for all their models. Yes, the parts can be expensive, but at least they are available.

I don't have specific experience trying to get factory support for my Rodgers, but service has been outsourced to the local Allen dealer in my area--it was formerly a Rodgers dealership. The Rodgers dealer does not provide service to the earlier organs, but the Allen dealer has to buy parts through the Rodgers dealer--prices are high to begin with for the parts, and the purchasing arrangement makes it all the more expensive.

So, I would not recommend any digital Rodgers--nor any digital organ from a defunct builder if you aren't willing to gamble that it might become un-repairable with the first failure you encounter. Prices should be based accordingly.

[KC9UDX]

@Leisesturm I don't disagree with you but I don't think your analogy fits and I wonder why you had such a hard time getting a new heater core for a car that new. If I needed one today for my AMC (out of business since December 1987), I could probably have a new one by the weekend. In fact there are multiple manufacturers making replacements. That can't be said for any organ that I'm aware of.

[jbird604]

The answers to all your questions could be "yes, no, and maybe" ;-)

Kenny tells it like it is, regarding his 90's model Rodgers experience, and I can only add a few observations as a tech. As with Kenny's organ, it may often be much more practical to gut an old organ and do the VPO thing. Not only for better sound and up to date features, but to get away from having to depend on a single company for support.

To be sure, Rodgers is a good company, and the Global Group is a solid international firm with a good grasp of the organ business. Rodgers is lucky to have been bought up by people who are serious about church organs. I have seen and played some of their newest organs, and find them to be wonderful in every way. Nothing negative about their products today.

A Rodgers organ today is still a unique product, not a Johannus with a Rodgers sticker on it. The consoles may be built in Holland, but they are still outfitting them with Roland technology, at least until the next generation gets introduced. At that point, they will probably share a lot of design and even parts with Johannus, but Rodgers samples will continue to be used, along with certain distinctive Rodgers features and the "look."

For a good many years they have been downplaying support for analog organs, which isn't surprising. The vast majority of parts in analog organs are generic components, and a willing tech can nearly always fix whatever ails one. The only serious issue with analogs concerns the CPU boards that were used in the 80's -- "serial-keyed" and "LTG" and "MICASKO" organs. This board cannot be bought from Rodgers new or used, nor from anybody else I know of. Most if not all the IC's on it are generic and probably still available, but it could be quite a chore to renovate one of those should it go down. Good news is that it has been a very reliable CPU, but you take a chance when obtaining an 80's analog, as it might be a boat anchor soon, or else become a good candidate for a VPO conversion.

But as to parts and support for PDI and Cheetah digitals from the 90's -- they'll do the best they can for you. So far the only parts I've found totally NLA are keyboards for Cheetah organs (suffering from the pink glue drip) and Insignia series main boards. The supply of other parts may be very shallow, but they probably don't get a call every week or every year for a PDI board, so what they have on hand could last for years.

Anything built since about 2000, they still have a good parts supply and they have a tech on staff who can help you out. It's a big company, and Global is a very big company, so I'm not too worried about complete loss of support on anything. They do have a reputation to maintain. Nobody else does it like Allen, but they're an entirely different sort of company, and comparisons to Allen may seem unflattering. Truth is though, most any organ over about 25 years old is probably on thin ice. You can still keep most of them running, but it often requires a great deal of creativity and cash too, unless you do your own repairs or seek out used parts on the internet.

[JohnBoyDeere]

I don't care if it is washing machines or Atlas rockets, everything has designed obsolescence! The easiest way to make that work is to price yourself out of the replacement parts business. And as has already been stated, just go VPO (I prefer English organs or the Cavaille'-Coll 1903 Metz organ!) Just say'n...

[Dewey643]

The answers to all your questions could be "yes, no, and maybe" ;-)

Kenny tells it like it is, regarding his 90's model Rodgers experience, and I can only add a few observations as a tech. As with Kenny's organ, it may often be much more practical to gut an old organ and do the VPO thing. Not only for better sound and up to date features, but to get away from having to depend on a single company for support.

To be sure, Rodgers is a good company, and the Global Group is a solid international firm with a good grasp of the organ business. Rodgers is lucky to have been bought up by people who are serious about church organs. I have seen and played some of their newest organs, and find them to be wonderful in every way. Nothing negative about their products today.

A Rodgers organ today is still a unique product, not a Johannus with a Rodgers sticker on it. The consoles may be built in Holland, but they are still outfitting them with Roland technology, at least until the next generation gets introduced. At that point, they will probably share a lot of design and even parts with Johannus, but Rodgers samples will continue to be used, along with certain distinctive Rodgers features and the "look."

For a good many years they have been downplaying support for analog organs, which isn't surprising. The vast majority of parts in analog organs are generic components, and a willing tech can nearly always fix whatever ails one. The only serious issue with analogs concerns the CPU boards that were used in the 80's -- "serial-keyed" and "LTG" and "MICASKO" organs. This board cannot be bought from Rodgers new or used, nor from anybody else I know of. Most if not all the IC's on it are generic and probably still available, but it could be quite a chore to renovate one of those should it go down. Good news is that it has been a very reliable CPU, but you take a chance when obtaining an 80's analog, as it might be a boat anchor soon, or else become a good candidate for a VPO conversion.

But as to parts and support for PDI and Cheetah digitals from the 90's -- they'll do the best they can for you. So far the only parts I've found totally NLA are keyboards for Cheetah organs (suffering from the pink glue drip) and Insignia series main boards. The supply of other parts may be very shallow, but they probably don't get a call every week or every year for a PDI board, so what they have on hand could last for years.

Anything built since about 2000, they still have a good parts supply and they have a tech on staff who can help you out. It's a big company, and Global is a very big company, so I'm not too worried about complete loss of support on anything. They do have a reputation to maintain. Nobody else does it like Allen, but they're an entirely different sort of company, and comparisons to Allen may seem unflattering. Truth is though, most any organ over about 25 years old is probably on thin ice. You can still keep most of them running, but it often requires a great deal of creativity and cash too, unless you do your own repairs or seek out used parts on the internet.

Thanks,John! It's good to hear this all come straight from a technician,...rather than a bunch of the non-sense you read on Facebook at times! I find this forum to be a much more reliable source than Facebook. Allen may still be my first choice,...but I think I would feel comfortable with a Rodgers made about 2005,or so depending on model and price. A good Rodgers would be a second choice as long as it's a two manual with built-in speakers,...I don't have the room for external speakers! I wonder what model Rodgers would have that would be comparable in size to an Allen AP-4 Protégé as far as a used one is concerned. I ran across a photo of the Rodgers T788i organ on a google search. That may be a viable option for me if the price would be right,...only thing worrying me is the size,..probably a little bigger than an AP-4 Protégé from Allen!

[Casavant Fan]

The Chicago Rodgers dealer, Triune Music, has a Trillium 787 available. This is from 2001, has 2 manuals, internal speakers, and is AGO spec. Right now, it is on loan to a church in Grand Rapids but should return soon. I was seriously looking at this one before deciding to go with the Inspire.

[kennyrayandersen]

To some degree this may also affect the pricing. Used BMWs, for instance, or used Jaguars, can be bought at a significant discount compared with new. Part of that is due to reliability, and party of it is due to the high cost of repair should there be a problem. In the end organs are a product and a lot of discussion on the forum about the low cost of used organs. I think that had a lot to do with the cost to put things right when things go wrong. When used parts are reasonable, and available the risk is decreased and the retained value higher. After having gone through my own trying to put it right exercise, I can see that more clearly. Since I bought cheaply with the intent of making a VPO, it worked out OK for me, but I could have just as easily bought a working instrument for more money and then had something significant go south. It would have been harsher.

[Menschenstimme]

Yes indeed - point well spoken!

I have sometimes compared pipe organs to older Rolls-Royce automobiles regarding artisanal, high maintenance and depreciation attributes in common.

[John Vanderlee]

....."To be sure, Rodgers is a good company, and the Global Group is a solid international firm with a good grasp of the organ business. Rodgers is lucky to have been bought up by people who are serious about church organs. I have seen and played some of their newest organs, and find them to be wonderful in every way. Nothing negative about their products today.

A Rodgers organ today is still a unique product, not a Johannus with a Rodgers sticker on it. The consoles may be built in Holland, but they are still outfitting them with Roland technology, at least until the next generation gets introduced. At that point, they will probably share a lot of design and even parts with Johannus, but Rodgers samples will continue to be used, along with certain distinctive Rodgers features and the "look."....

FWIW, I had a chance to visit the Johannus facility in Holland last July. It is a beautiful building filled with dedicated people. The engineer/designer I met with was most hospitable and willing to answer questions without sales pressure. What John said in the above segment, especially about Rodgers, is exactly the impression they left me with. They have a different building philosophy from Allen which seems to serve them well, and I mean no disrespect to Allen - I love Allen products. Yet they have many forward looking ideas, and seem hellbent on making the best digital organs possible. They also respect Allen and envy their share in the US market, as I 'm sure Allen envies Johannus' share in the Euro-market.