Allen 3100 upgrade

[JohnBoyDeere]

As stated several times before on this fine forum, I have been completely satisfied with the electronic tonal upgrades to my 1986 Allen 3100. A few annoying mechanical items I finally addressed these past few weeks. I understand the need for "fru-fru" to make broader sales to the general public but "bling" on a church organ never interested me. Things like celestial this and that, percussion long and shorts (har!) etc., etc. In this, I also found that the Alternate stop draw knobs to be poorly placed and really desired to move them to the stop rail rockers.

After a lot of reading and research I ordered 14 new rocker face plates from Hesco in Hagerstown, Md. with the thought to glue them over the original Allen rockers. After painting the originals flat black, CNC machining a gluing fixture, away I went. I re arranged the stop rail accordingly and also rewired neatly to make it all work. The Allen 3100 service manual recently purchased on ebay was invaluable for proper wiring too!

I also installed 6 new blank draw knob heads, removed the obsolete name badges and engraved my own custom badge to upgrade the original Allen stock badge.

Anyway, with it all finished, I am now extra satisfied with this great instrument. The black background on the rockers looks neat and tidy. I told my wife today there is nothing else to improve on it, happy days:) Hats off to Cheryl at Hesco too!

Come over and play it sometime!

[toodles]

I would not describe celeste voices as "fru-fru"--they are fairly essential for some romantic music.

That said, you did a very nice job of moving the alterable section to the tab rail, and the tab work looks very professional.

[JohnBoyDeere]

Toodles, Wouldn't an ample supply of Skinner string samples be a nice addition!

Hesco really went out of their way to get my small order right with several emails before manufacturing. They did an exact match (wonder how, har!) of the Allen font and size. Great people!

thanks for the kind words too:)

[jbird604]

Wow! this looks great! Way back in the 80's when I sold a fair number of 3100's I was puzzled by the odd arrangement of the controls and thought it would be so much neater to have the couplers and alterables and such done up just the way you've done it. I think someone at Allen just sort of went to sleep at the design table when they were sketching out the console layout. I wasn't crazy about the crooked line they drew between the swell knobs and the pedal knobs either, but that only took a bit of mental discipline to get used to. (And I've seen actual pipe organ consoles with knobs not all in a straight line.)

You're lucky that the MADC models are so easily re-configured, using the ordinary non-multiplexed stop switching carried over from MOS. (Unlike the large ADC models and all subsequent Allen models, which had multiplexing of the tabs, and thus nearly impossible to move functions around.)

Glad you are so delighted with the 3100 now. It was and still is a very nifty model in so many ways. Perfect economy of stops, and very useful for service playing as well as as a home organ. There was a 3100 free for the taking about 10 or 11 years ago here, when a church that had bought one from me closed up. It wound up going into my business partner's church to replace an old T-12. We added MIDI to it, and he also discovered some "undocumented features" such as the way the crescendo doesn't actually couple the swell stop rail to the great, even though it genuinely couples swell stops in the sequence. So you can, for example, draw the reeds on the swell by hand without having them sound from the great keys even with the crescendo fully on. Very interesting "bug" that he learned to exploit, almost like having a third manual at hand.

Truly a timeless organ. Hard to improve on a nearly perfect design, especially after the great job you've done upgrading the tab layout. I trust you'll enjoy it for years or decades to come.

[JohnBoyDeere]

JBIRD/TOODLES: This little project was completed in no small part to the "Multiplexed" portion/concerns that were answered by you and others in previous posts, THANKS!

I can sorta see the numerous console conundrums based on small jambs but putting one divisions tremulant on a tab with the other division on a knob was very, well, non standard... The same with the Celeste thingies, har. I really like the traditional look of the black background with the white faces on the tilt tabs. If anyone would like to borrow the gluing fixture, just ask.

Now, what to do with those 6 blank knobsO:-) (Wish they were in the swell division...)

[jbird604]

It needs a new "floating" division on those unused knobs! But then you'd have to add more couplers somewhere...

If you were in a church you might consider adding some of these "special function" knobs....

[myorgan]

Now, what to do with those 6 blank knobsO:-) (Wish they were in the swell division...)

How about MIDI for the various divisions? Interesting project, as well as information about that particular model and lack of multiplexing. I always avoided those organs because of the lack of various choruses between the manuals, as well as the seemingly random placement of the drawknobs.

Best of luck with the additional blanks.

Michael