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We were called out to a distant corner of the state to assist with an organ "transplant" yesterday. An interesting story behind all this, if you'll bear with me...
For decades there had been two prosperous Lutheran churches in this smallish Arkansas town in an area popular with northern retirees. Different synods or something, but both healthy. Thirty years ago, one of them (church "A") really started to take off, so they sold their beautiful old-fashioned church building of stone and wood with high ceiling and marvelous acoustics and built a "modern" church facility to accommodate the larger crowd. The modern building was of course lousy in acoustics -- carpet, pew cushions, a fairly lofty but still acoustic-tile suspended ceiling. The MOS Allen organ was moved from the old church to the new one and I re-installed it for them. I was quite appalled at the downgrade in sound quality. It sounded simply awful in the new place, but there was little I could do about it. It had four HC-10 speakers, quite nice, but with rotted foam, so I repaired them at the time and used premium Eminence textile surround 15" woofers. I also added a set of smaller speakers behind a little grille in the choir area, since the acoustics were poor enough that the organ was not heard adequately.
The other Lutheran church ("B") had an old AGO Baldwin analog that kept playing until only about 5 years ago, when they replaced it with a little Rodgers 558 -- a 2m AGO tab console similar to the Roland C-330 but with Hillsboro console and pedals and a better audio system. The dealer hung a little Roland home theater speaker setup on it, which was adequate for the small sanctuary and the handful of people left in that church by then.
Church "A" did pretty well for a while, but eventually went into decline as the congregation aged and shrank. The current situation is that maybe 40 people worship in the sanctuary built for 300, and there is no more choir, just a group of 4 or 5 singers who stand at individual microphones and give some boost to the service music as best they can. The Allen MOS kept playing all these years of course, as they do, but I only just found out that in the past year one S-100 amp died, and they contacted an Allen dealer in another state (as they are outside my normal service area) who quoted $4000 for new amps (given that S-100's are NLA and must be replaced with the "all-purpose" amp system Allen now offers to older organ owners).
Rather than pay that kind of money, a church member with some electronics/audio background used a Y-cable to play both channels through one amp. That made it sound even worse of course, but that was all they could do.
A few months ago, church "B" decided to fold and merge with the other one. They offered the nearly new Rodgers to church "A," which they immediately accepted. The little organ designed for a living room or chapel was moved to the cavernous and acoustically inert sanctuary, but didn't sound very good, needless to say, though the organist definitely liked it better than what they had.
I got a call and went up to survey the situation. I too thought the little Rodgers sounded quite good, just inadequate in there. Fortunately, these organs are built for easy audio expansion, and I suggested going to a beefy external audio system. The church approved the project, and we are now in the midst.
I discovered right away that you can't just hook up a standard six or eight channel Rodgers amp directly to this series organ. First you have to order an adapter board from Rodgers for a few hundred dollars and upgrade the system software via USB port. Since they already had the four nice Allen HC-10 speakers, I suggested that we do a four-channel setup, two swell, two great/pedal. Not the full monty for that organ, but certainly a far cry better than the pitiful console speaker system and the tiny Roland TV speakers.
The sound man in the church ordered a nice Crown four-channel amp, same one Rodgers is now using on their high-end installs. It's incredibly compact. A rack-mount form factor but only about an inch high, with inputs and outputs on the rear using plug-in detachable thingies that make wiring very easy. it has the ability to turn on remotely from the Rodgers console using the relay voltage the organ can send, but they opted not to use that feature. (Good idea, as I understand even Rodgers dealers are installing these with the amps left on all the time. They go to sleep and generate zero heat with no signal input, and there have been some issues with the amps waking up reliably with the relay signal anyway.)
He went ahead and came out the stereo line-level aux jacks and connected the amp, DIP switches set to parallel each of the two inputs on two amps. Connected the four HC-10's and placed them in the floor of the former choir loft, aiming them back at the wall. When we went up to do a recon mission yesterday, it sounded astounding! So much better than I've ever heard from one of these little organs or similar, such as the C-330. Even the 32' pedal stop in the "library" division was quite powerfully represented. We walked into the church as the organist was in there practicing, and I was just in awe.
Not only do the four amps and HC-10's make the sound rich and huge, the built-in ambiance or whatever it has seems to greatly overcome the awful acoustic situation in the church. And the beautiful samples on the organ, with their luscious chiffs and air sound and elegant tuning offsets, make it sound like a million dollars in there!
We are planning to go back with the adapter board and a custom cable to connect to the Crown amp, then do some voicing and leveling, but it really sounds awesome already. Just far exceeded my expectations and made me almost salivate to get one of these!
I'll report and possibly post pics and/or a recording once we get the job done.
For decades there had been two prosperous Lutheran churches in this smallish Arkansas town in an area popular with northern retirees. Different synods or something, but both healthy. Thirty years ago, one of them (church "A") really started to take off, so they sold their beautiful old-fashioned church building of stone and wood with high ceiling and marvelous acoustics and built a "modern" church facility to accommodate the larger crowd. The modern building was of course lousy in acoustics -- carpet, pew cushions, a fairly lofty but still acoustic-tile suspended ceiling. The MOS Allen organ was moved from the old church to the new one and I re-installed it for them. I was quite appalled at the downgrade in sound quality. It sounded simply awful in the new place, but there was little I could do about it. It had four HC-10 speakers, quite nice, but with rotted foam, so I repaired them at the time and used premium Eminence textile surround 15" woofers. I also added a set of smaller speakers behind a little grille in the choir area, since the acoustics were poor enough that the organ was not heard adequately.
The other Lutheran church ("B") had an old AGO Baldwin analog that kept playing until only about 5 years ago, when they replaced it with a little Rodgers 558 -- a 2m AGO tab console similar to the Roland C-330 but with Hillsboro console and pedals and a better audio system. The dealer hung a little Roland home theater speaker setup on it, which was adequate for the small sanctuary and the handful of people left in that church by then.
Church "A" did pretty well for a while, but eventually went into decline as the congregation aged and shrank. The current situation is that maybe 40 people worship in the sanctuary built for 300, and there is no more choir, just a group of 4 or 5 singers who stand at individual microphones and give some boost to the service music as best they can. The Allen MOS kept playing all these years of course, as they do, but I only just found out that in the past year one S-100 amp died, and they contacted an Allen dealer in another state (as they are outside my normal service area) who quoted $4000 for new amps (given that S-100's are NLA and must be replaced with the "all-purpose" amp system Allen now offers to older organ owners).
Rather than pay that kind of money, a church member with some electronics/audio background used a Y-cable to play both channels through one amp. That made it sound even worse of course, but that was all they could do.
A few months ago, church "B" decided to fold and merge with the other one. They offered the nearly new Rodgers to church "A," which they immediately accepted. The little organ designed for a living room or chapel was moved to the cavernous and acoustically inert sanctuary, but didn't sound very good, needless to say, though the organist definitely liked it better than what they had.
I got a call and went up to survey the situation. I too thought the little Rodgers sounded quite good, just inadequate in there. Fortunately, these organs are built for easy audio expansion, and I suggested going to a beefy external audio system. The church approved the project, and we are now in the midst.
I discovered right away that you can't just hook up a standard six or eight channel Rodgers amp directly to this series organ. First you have to order an adapter board from Rodgers for a few hundred dollars and upgrade the system software via USB port. Since they already had the four nice Allen HC-10 speakers, I suggested that we do a four-channel setup, two swell, two great/pedal. Not the full monty for that organ, but certainly a far cry better than the pitiful console speaker system and the tiny Roland TV speakers.
The sound man in the church ordered a nice Crown four-channel amp, same one Rodgers is now using on their high-end installs. It's incredibly compact. A rack-mount form factor but only about an inch high, with inputs and outputs on the rear using plug-in detachable thingies that make wiring very easy. it has the ability to turn on remotely from the Rodgers console using the relay voltage the organ can send, but they opted not to use that feature. (Good idea, as I understand even Rodgers dealers are installing these with the amps left on all the time. They go to sleep and generate zero heat with no signal input, and there have been some issues with the amps waking up reliably with the relay signal anyway.)
He went ahead and came out the stereo line-level aux jacks and connected the amp, DIP switches set to parallel each of the two inputs on two amps. Connected the four HC-10's and placed them in the floor of the former choir loft, aiming them back at the wall. When we went up to do a recon mission yesterday, it sounded astounding! So much better than I've ever heard from one of these little organs or similar, such as the C-330. Even the 32' pedal stop in the "library" division was quite powerfully represented. We walked into the church as the organist was in there practicing, and I was just in awe.
Not only do the four amps and HC-10's make the sound rich and huge, the built-in ambiance or whatever it has seems to greatly overcome the awful acoustic situation in the church. And the beautiful samples on the organ, with their luscious chiffs and air sound and elegant tuning offsets, make it sound like a million dollars in there!
We are planning to go back with the adapter board and a custom cable to connect to the Crown amp, then do some voicing and leveling, but it really sounds awesome already. Just far exceeded my expectations and made me almost salivate to get one of these!
I'll report and possibly post pics and/or a recording once we get the job done.
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