Which new organ would you suggest? Why?

[Guest]

Hello all,<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I am actively searching for an organ to practice on (2 or 3 manual - preferably drawstop rather than tabs). </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I have played a few brands, and have come to some conclusions, but would like further guidance.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>For background, I am a pipe organ builder in the UK, but need the electronic for practice. I have very little idea of the capabilities of each brand.</DIV><DIV>I prefer English voicing (romantic and pre-romantic) and early Italian.</DIV><DIV>It will be going in a small living room, and I will be using it with headphones a lot of the time.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I have looked at: </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>secondhand Johannus 30 (3 man) - horrible sound. No full swell effect (lacking 16 reed), organ sounds thin &amp; weedy. Seems not to have any cohesion, a collection of noises.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Viscount Prestige 40 (but am interested in Prestige 50 because of stop knobs) - Sound OK, but nothing special. To be frank, I tried this in a shop where there was background noise. This didn't help. Again, not a particularly good "English" full swell. From what I could hear I didn't think that the speaker system was very good. The keyboard tried to be a baroque double scored ivory design, but felt plasticky! Still I would consider it, because of price!</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Johannus Opus 7 - I was pleasantly surprised, considering the Johannus I had seen before! Still not a good full organ sound. No "full swell" to come bursting through the great! but with the baroque voicing I thought that the separate stops were very good. Also I was surprised that the speakers could handle the 16' so well. The sound overall was much better than the Viscount, but lacking in stops... Also no drawstop version.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Makin Westmorland Jubilee II (what a mouthfull!) - Physically the best organ - seemd to have the best build quality, and the voices were very good. I was surprised that the 7 channel speakers didn't seem to be able to handle the bass very well, and there were several notes in the middle of the keyboard that were "boomy" - may have been resonance in the showroom??? (according to the salesman) ;-) Also it seemed ridiculous that the swell was enclosed on the right pedal, and the great and pedal on the left. The only classical pipe organ I have found with an enclosed gt &amp; ped was a Hope-Jones! Drawstop version of this costs MUCH more...! </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I would like to try a Phoenix organ and an Allen. Any comments about these two brands? Anybody with one I can listen to in the east of England? (I am in Norfolk)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I had also considered getting an old pipe organ console and having a Phoenix built inside it. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Have seen advertised a secondhand Allen MDS 46. Any comments? Seems too big for my situation!</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Thanks in advance for any comments.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Siddie.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>

[jbird604]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



Siddie,</P>


You seem to be on the right track. You may be hard-pressed to find everything you're looking for in one organ, though, unless you can spend quite a bit of money. Your thought about getting an old console and having a Phoenix built in it may be a good option to check out. That way you could get exactly what you want. I believe the Allen MDS 46 is a theatre organ,possibly not what you have in mind.</P>


You might take another look at Johannus. Find a dealer who really stocks all the models, not just the low-end Opus series.Get the latest brochure from a dealer or go to the website to get more information about the much-improved models they introduced just last year:</P>


www.johannus.com</P>


Since you want drawknobs, you'll have to look at the Rembrandt series. These organs are quite reasonably priced here in the US, quite a bit less than the better-known brands. They are highly voiceable, each stop can be individually adjusted, as can each note of each rank. Some of the stops can be custom chosen from a library of samples, so they might be able to put together a specification just like you want.</P>


I also know that Johannus can build you a custom instrument from the ground up with their Monarke technology. Might be expensive, not sure.</P>


I'm not very familiar with the UK organ market, so I'm sure there are other worthy companies whose organs you should try.</P>


Good luck.</P>


John</P>
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[Guest]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



Good evening, Siddie,</p>

I just stumbled across this thread. If you haven't made a purchase yet, let me give you my (almost completely) unqualified endorsement of an Allen. I owned an Allen MOS-1 instrument for about 20 years, and it served me well--not a single service call.</p>


Good luck!
</p>

[clumber]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



Well, you are most certainly on the right track! Phoenix's Dave Bostock and Don Anderson do a magnificent job with samples and electronics. I've never seen the UK build quality, but based on the North American shop's quality, do call up Phoenix and chat with them about where to go play one.</p>

And my only warning here is that our church bought a Phoenix built with wonderful Harrison and Harrison samples, and we love it, so some might think me a tad biased!

Andy
</p>

[Rob_Charles]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?

If it was me looking for a home practice organ, I would probably either go with a Johannus or a Makin or a Wyvern so much to choose, but I do like the sound from the Makins to be fair.

[njschranz]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?

Check out Eminent Digital Organs. Very reasonable prices for a customizable organ. I've got a Capella III and love it. The UK dealer is Cathedral Organs and they can be reached at: www.cathedralorgans.com

[Stefanussen]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



Have you considered building your own home practice organ? The end result, if done properly is an organ that sounds just as good as some of the top names in electronic organs, something that's highly customizable, and last but not least: you're probably going to end up spending about a tenth of the price if you're not too concerned about making sure your home organ doubles as a piece of furniture fit for the local cathedral.</p>

Hauptwerk 2
</p>

[Guest]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?

Thank you all for your replies...<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Stefanussen - how would I go about this? The main problem I can see is where would I get the circuitry? I have no problems with making a console look good, and fitting it out with a capture system etc... but what about the speakers, amplifier, tone generating circuits etc.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>If using Hauptwerk as you seem to suggest, I would still need a good amplifier etc, MIDI units for the keyboards etc... swell pedal... et al...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Can I also seperate the outputs to different amps from Hauptwerk? I would probably use a Mac mini... (I am a Mac person already)</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Siddie.</DIV>

[Stefanussen]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



There are companies out there who have built all the midi hardware you need at very affordable price points (compared to a new Allen) check out www.classicmidi.com</p><ul>[*]3 manual tracker touch - $2,200[*]3 swell shoes - $600[*]Pedalboard - $1,300[/list]

As for the audio interface (the piece of hardware you are asking about) you don't need lots of fancy audio mixing equipment or anything, all you'll need is an audio interface. Check out a Focusrite Saffire for $400.</p>

As for speakers, there's a lot you could do... you could get a real nice set of headphones for $3-400, or you can get a couple of Audiophile speakers from Definitive for $5,000 (or you can get 8 big speakers for the ultimate multi channel arrangement for about $8,000 [:D] [good for making sure the neighbors know you're packing a 32' Contre Bombarde]). And yes, the speakers will connect to the audio interface mentioned above, and Hauptwerk is completely flexible in routing different ranks (or however you want to do it) to different channels.</p>

A home organ can be fairly easily built like this with little more Do-It-Yourself than really taking things out of the boxes and connecting one piece to the other. If you want to build your own organ with every last amenity then you're looking at a bit more configuration, but certainly doable as many already have!</p>

[nullogik]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



Siddie, what is your budget?</P>


I can recommend an excellent family based company that specialise in Allen, Viscount &amp; Rodgers and are based just outside London (will travel anywhere in the country). We've used them for 20-odd years (servicing mainly) but have recently had a new organ bought and installed by this company.</P>

[Guest]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?

[quote user="Siddie"]Thank you all for your replies...
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>If using Hauptwerk as you seem to suggest, I would still need a good amplifier etc, MIDI units for the keyboards etc... swell pedal... et al...</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>Can I also seperate the outputs to different amps from Hauptwerk? I would probably use a Mac mini... (I am a Mac person already)</DIV>
<DIV></DIV>


[/quote]</P>


The MacMini is problematic with Hauptwerk because of memory limitations. The point is not so much that you have to have an enormous system for HW, but that if the system is too small, you will loose some of the HW features that are important to realism, have issues with the memory size requirements of some of the best sample sets, and potentially have issues with polyphony on a large instrument sampled in a very "wet" acoustic environment.</P>


Even in large configurations, HW is stillmuch less expensive than anything commercial that's anywhere near a reasonable comparison. And less expensive than even thebottom end of new commercial instruments -- which isn't a valid comparison at all.</P>


My currentinstrument is a Rodgers 750BE 2-manual (1980 vintage) console gutted and converted to midi, new tracker-touch midi keyboards, HW 2.21 Concert Edition running on a Mac Pro (4-cores, 9GB Ram), 12 channels of audio, and a fairly wide range of sample sets. Everything added up, including the purchase price of the fully working Rodgers bought used almost 8 years ago, less than $15000. Which sounds like a lot, but relative to anything evenvaguelycomparable, aHUGE bargain for a home instrument. I'd call this something in the "upper midrange" of HW installations. Many users get by with much less; some have far more elaborate installations, including custom drawknob consoles, and all manner of goodies I can only drool over :-)</P>

[Chiff Drawbar]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



If any of you have photographs of fully up-and-running Hauptwerk organs, please post them or provide a link. There's so much talk about Hauptwerk asincredible computersoftware, but I'd like to see more examples of Hauptwerk as a musical instrument.</P>


How long before I'll be able to walk into a "Hauptwerk Store," play different models and say to the sales rep, "I want that one. When can you deliver it?"</P>

[Guest]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?

[quote user="Chiff Drawbar"] If any of you have photographs of fully up-and-running Hauptwerk organs, please post them or provide a link. There's so much talk about Hauptwerk asincredible computersoftware, but I'd like to see more examples of Hauptwerk as a musical instrument.


How long before I'll be able to walk into a "Hauptwerk Store," play different models and say to the sales rep, "I want that one. When can you deliver it?"[/quote]</P>


Well, mine looks like Rodgers 750B :-) (I'll try to put a photo up later today, but it's pretty pedestrian looking). </P>


Idon't think you'll ever be able to walk into a "Hauptwerk Store" with model numbers and all that. Every installation is different.</P>


However, midiworks does sell some preconfigured packages -- http://www.midiworks.ca/home/index.asp, and Milan Digital in the US is selling Hauptwerk consoles built by Hoppe -- very very nice, but it is JUST the console -- http://www.milandigitalaudio.com/mas...di-console.htm. And Hoffrichter (sp?) in Germany.</P>


And there are certainly someincredible custom systems that have been built -- http://www.crumhorn-labs.com/forum/v...hlight=console</P>


In the end, what it looks like is far less important than what it sounds like .. :-)</P>

[radagast]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?



Well, since you are in the UK, I suggest you checkHoffrichter out:</P>
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http://www.hoffrichter-organs.co.uk/html/products.html</P>
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This is the site for theUK representative. They make organs with tone generators and Hauptwerk consoles as well.</P>
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Some pictures are here:</P>
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http://www.hoffrichter-organs.co.uk/html/pictures.html</P>

[Guest]

Re: Which new organ would you suggest? Why?

[quote user="Chiff Drawbar"]


but I'd like to see more examples of Hauptwerk as a musical instrument.</P>


[/quote]</P>


Here it is ..</P>


</P>


Looks like an organ to me ... :-) </P>


The touch screen on the right side is for the new sample sets on the next version of HW which support independent GUI's for the left and right stop jams. The organ currently loaded is the Silbermann at St. Georgenkirche. You can see the Mac Pro which runs HW on the floor at the left of the console. The firewire audio interface (Audiofire 12) and speaker systems are on the other side of the room.</P>
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