Meaning of RACO

[Casavant Fan]

I have seen several organs described as having RACO pedals. Normally, this means a 30 pedal array. Is this a dimensional standard? If so, who set it? I know the source of AGO and BDO, but not RACO. Maybe an abbreviation for “radiating concave”?

[arie v]

Hi,

RACO is the British pedalboard standard, it is radiating concave.

AV

[MarkS]

I was under the impression that RCO (Royal College of Organsts) is just about the same as AGO.

RACO must be an acronym for something.

[mrdc2000]

Arie is correct, Radiating Concave. It uses 30 notes as opposed to the AGO 32 notes standard used in the US and that is also Radiating Concave.
When I played on a RaCo (Johannus) Studio model pedalboard once, I noticed no difference, the notes fall into the same location as a "normal" 32-note AGO board, just the top 2 are missing.

[Melos Antropon]

With Johannus organs being built in The Netherlands, I wonder if RACO might stand for "Royal Amsterdam College of Organists"?

Tony

[voet]

This thread has encouraged me to dig into this a bit more.

As most readers of this forum probably know, the AGO standard is 32-note radiating concave pedalboard as mrdc2000 mentioned above. AGO publishes their very detailed console standards including the pedalboard. Here is a link to the PDF:
http://www.westminsterorganworks.com/pdf/agoconsole.pdf

Some builders say that their pedalboards are BDO standard. BDO (Bund Deutscher Orgelbaumeister which translates Association of German Organ Builders) has 2 standards 1. concave/radiating and 2. concave/parallel. These can be either 30 or 32 notes.

I have found a number of references to RACO or RaCo described as Ratiating Concave. This is offered by a number of the European digital builders for people who request an AGO standard pedalboard. However, the sharps and naturals are a bit shorter than the AGO specs and the arc is a bit less for an RaCo board. I doubt it is as truncated as a Princess pedalboard, but I don't have one to compare.

When I first got my instrument, it felt awkward to play. I have played some historic instruments in this country and Europe that are not AGO standard, but most of my experience has been with instruments built to AGO specs. I found the AGO PDF very useful for comparing the console of my Content to the AGO standard. I did not find the adjustment to the RaCo standard to be that difficult. I did have trouble with the greater distance to the pedalboard, so I elevated the rear end 2 inches which helped greatly.

[Kian2019]

But it is much more difficult than to understand the official abbreviations. imagine that you know the abbreviation and then mistakenly speak about it and take it into our speech. In the end, this is not what it really is. How to understand them? I know that there is a whole list of such unspoken abbreviations, I even discovered a new one - this is ion meaning in our texting, which I read about recently. Everything is very interesting-someone introduces these abbreviations, but there is no official Wikipedia for this, and everyone has to think or bother looking for a definition.

[cinnamon]

Spoken abbreviations? How about by doctors?
https://youtu.be/nRTMA8-Eaws