Johnson Ferry Baptist Church Organ–Final Disposition?
Does anyone know the final disposition of the 5-manual Allen at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta GA? The organ was discussed ad nauseum in another tread, but I was wondering how it ended up once it disappeared from *Bay. Curious minds and all.
Michael
Way too many organs to list, but I do have 5 Allens:
It was no longer on eBay a couple of weeks ago but it did not show up as sold or unsold when searching "Completed Items". On a FB posting about his new Walker, I asked John the organist what happened to the Allen. He "liked" my question, but didn't respond. So I, too, am curious about where it went. Might still be in a warehouse in Atlanta! That is still a lot of organ even if only half working.
I tried selling that church a new Reuter pipe organ at the time they bought that Allen. Had they bought a pipe organ instead, they would have had a still vibrant instrument with probably no more than a bellows overhaul due by now. Instead, they have thrown away a huge investment in an electronic organ, and made another huge investment in another one.
Please don't misunderstand me....there are churches and financial considerations, where an electronic organ is a better decision. But in the case of this particular church, they are in a very good position to be able to afford a pipe organ.
Jay999 - My organ training was on Reuter Pipe Organs (chapel & practice organs) at Oklahoma Baptist University in the 1970's. We even visited Lawrence, KS, for a factory tour. I have high regard for Reuter Organs.
Jay is right. But bascially there was no reason to “dump” the organ. Some routine maintenance - and that goes for any type of organ - would have prevented a lot of the failures. Nobody actually ever told us what was really wrong. Then again a lightning strike would do real dmage, and I've heard of pipe organs where lightning damaged the wiring! JMHO
Can't play an note but love all things "organ" Responsible for 2/10 Wurli pipe organ, Allen 3160(wife's), Allen LL324, Allen GW319EX, ADC4600, many others. E-organ shop to fund free organ lessons for kids.
Actually we did find out the cause of the problems, just not why they were not addressed in a timely manor. All of those cages filled with TT generator cards were stacked in relatively closed wooden boxes with no forced ventilation in them and perhaps inadequate air conditioning for the BTU load in the room. The years of exposure to higher temperatures caused eventual and inevitable component failures.
IMHO there is lots of blame to go around, including the designers who scaled up the system to this density level without doing a proper thermal dissipation analysis to the installers who did not recognize the potential for a problem after being around those stacked cages to those who did maintenance on the instrument who did not insist on a modification to the cooling of the generator electronics when the very first problems with stop (TT generator card) failures occurred.
Heat is certainly a huge factor in decreasing the longevity of components and integrated circuits are no exception.
Why did they not think of things like cooling/ventilation,and heat dissipation of all that electronic circuitrty!
It was new technology at the time, and even the space program messed up on technology. One of our members shared info on one of the Apollo computers, and its companion video series, which outlined some of the "mistakes" made in its manufacture and/or implementation.
Organkeys....Yes, Reuter builds a good instrument. Now that I know the real story of why the Allen was replaced, I withdraw my unkindly comments about the church replacing the instrument in such a short period of time. I know the Allen dealer, here in Atlanta, and I'm pretty confident the heat issue was made known to the church. Lots of times, a music ministry budget can get in the way of proper maintenance, or a "know it all" can wave off preventative maintenance, and in some cases, people in charge are afraid to ask for funds, and would rather see the organ crash, before making waves with the administrative people on boards of directors. Possibly, the Allen technician ran into one of these situations, and backed away from making his own set of waves.
As to rebuilding that big organ... You never know until you try, but that might work out fine. The fact that the Allen completely quit working in its final days at JFBC could be due to relatively few things, such as the power supply (presumably in the console) that ran the Console Multiplexer (assuming that this organ operated in a scaled-up but similar manner to other ADC-era Allens). A tech would probably have found the fatal failure right away and brought it back to life, even though there were many cage boards down, thus dead stops. The numerous failed cage boards would require replacement, but since an Allen dealer bought the organ, he would at least get favorable treatment from the factory on the prices. Speakers can be re-foamed, and all the rest of the routine maintenance can be done, no matter how time-consuming or costly. This organ may in fact rise again!
OTOH, you'd have to ask yourself if it was truly worth the trouble. Yes, at the time it was built it was magnificent. Surely at the time the most amazing electronic organ ever built, and musically it was the equal of any organ in the world, for all practical purposes. You could certainly play any piece of organ music ever composed on it with astonishing results. Only a handful of elite folks in the entire world could have told that it was electronic just by listening.... BUT.... given the fact that Virtual Pipe Organ software running on off-the-shelf computer hardware has gotten so good in the past decade or so, is it really worth the time and expense to rebuild any older digital organ, no matter how sophisticated it was to begin with?
I'm not up to speed on current Hauptwerk setups, but I'd assume that a relatively inexpensive Windows computer (costing maybe $1000 to $1500) can easily run the top-level version of Hauptwerk and output maybe 16 channels of audio using some readily available audio interface. And the quality of the audio would be superb, with S/N and distortion unmeasurably low, with latency near zero. Sample sets with very long samples, and editing capabilities only dreamed of back when the JF organ was built.
It would take maybe a half dozen such computers to run a stoplist like this big Allen's, and output as many audio channels, but all that hardware wouldn't cost over $10,000. And for reference, replacing all that Allen hardware (10 cages) would surely cost $100,000 if not $200,000.
Bottom line -- just to create a similar specification using readily-available current technology might cost 1/10 of the cost to totally rebuild the Allen. But then again, running a big church organ on a Windows platform may not be everybody's idea of long-term reliability! Long-term reliability SHOULD be the major selling point of a big hardware organ. If it hadn't been for the unfortunate lack of ventilation, this one might have played for a hundred years.
John
---------- *** Please post your questions about technical service or repair matters ON THE FORUM. Do not send your questions to me or another member by private message. Information shared is for the benefit of the entire organ community, but other folks will not be helped by information we exchange in private messages!
There's also the possibility that the Allen factory quietly arranged, through one of their dealers, the purchase of the organ in order to get that big console back for re-purposing. It wouldn't be the first time that's ever happened. Pipe organ builders buy back their big consoles here and there.
Why did they not think of things like cooling/ventilation,and heat dissipation of all that electronic circuitry!
Allen might have been worried about dust contamination. I posed the question on the other thread asking how to provide adequate ventilation and still protect form dust.
Theatrical dimming companies learned the hard way that churches sometimes put their high density dimmer racks in uncooled attics. First the top dimmer would fail, then the next one down, etc. Bigger fans were added to new designs. Dust builds up. Filters were added. No one ever changed the filters - now we're back to the original problem. Then air flow sensors and temp sensors were added that could shut down the dimmers when things got too hot. Then customers complained that their lights weren't working in the church but no one knew why because there was no one who knew that they had to clean or change the filters... And so it goes.
Imagine if your electronic organ quit in the middle of a Sunday service because the air flow/temp sensor said the tone generator electronics were too hot! One does wonder how Walker handled the cooling for their electronics.
When Lutron Electronics (for whom I did contract work) designed their new architectural dimming cabinets back in the early 1990s they went with low-density, convection cooled cabinets. 25 years later most of those first installations are still working just fine. I did complain to one customer that their dimmer cabinet was in a boiler room with an ambient temperature of 105 degrees F - right at the upper environmental spec limit.
Turns out they had a stuck thermostat and were wasting a colossal amount of propane in that building every year but no one ever asked why until I pointed out the problem. Last I checked that dimmer cabinet is still working just fine, even though it had a thermal torture test for at few years. Good thermal engineering and conservative design can reduce the effects of ambient heat in electronic systems but heat is still the enemy of longevity.
(As an aside, Lutron is still building the same dimmer cabinet all these years later but the electronics on the individual dimmer cards have been redesigned and updated several times to reflect advances in dimmer and lighting technology.)
AllenAnalog, your post reminds me of a rather embarassing situation. One fall the fairly new furnace in my home quit working. I called the HVAC tech only to have him remind me that I needed to change the furnace filter more frequently. Newer furnaces are designed to stop working if there is insufficient air flow. There was nothing wrong with the furnace at all. In fact, if I have installed a new filter, I could have saved myself a service call. I have never made that mistake again.
It strikes me that if people would have regular maintenance visits from their organ tech, many problems could be avoided.
I do wish Walker's site was better at showcasing their installations. And I wish someone would do a video of the new instrument at Johnson Ferry. I would think Walker would be showing this all over the place.
As someone who knows Mr. Walker personally, I can tell you that boasting publicly about his work/instruments is not his nature. He prefers that the organs speak for themselves and that the word of mouth from others is the best publicity they can garner.
Very much so. The main stream business for Walker Technical is supplying digital voices to other manufactures. These are mainly pipe organ builders who welcome this partnership as he provide's the (specialty) items they don't really like to fool with: 32' ranks or extensions, tuned percussions like chimes and harp. The Rodgers hybrid organ at Ebenezer Baptist Church in downtown Atlanta has a Walker Technical Trompeteria division. In this case his reed voices were superior to the Rodgers.
He treads lightly in the area of building his own organs as he doesn't want to compete with his customers. Unless of course its a theatre organ which Allen is the only player and who is not a customer. I played a new Walker at a Catholic Church around the Louisville, KY area and it was amazing. The subtleties of hearing each note individually when playing a single rank showed the time and effort to make it as believable as possible. The Colby console with moving drawknobs and Skinner design clues was a joy as well.
At an ATOS convention many years ago where they debuted a 3 manual Walker theatre organ, he demonstrated to a few of us the reiteration on the Harp stop. He explained that on a real Deagon harp, the length of the mallets are different as the bars get longer down the scale. This causes the reit to be at slight different speeds, i.e. faster on the higher notes. Since the harp has pneumatic action, the reits aren't always perfect either when playing harmony or chords which kind of gives it a human quality. Case in point, he said he worked very hard over a period of time to develop and tweak the timing algorithm so that it perfectly mimics a reiterating, pneumatic harp!
To your last comment about the pneumatic harp, you should hear his real/orchestral harp that he is now putting in his organs. It is so real that you can actually hear the plucking of the string by someone as it was recorded yet not overly so as to be distracting. It sounds so exquisite that it brings tears to my eyes. The string samples he uses are so realistic sounding I've dubbed him "the keeper" of the E.M. and Aeolian Skinner strings but he is most proud of the reeds (and with good reason). The Johnson Ferry console was built in his own shop by his people very much in the Skinner vein although he does partner with Colby on many projects as he has great respect for their work.
Personally, I had no doubt that Walker built a very high quality organ.
I still prefer a real pipe organ when the church has economic availability.
Surely, this organ is a big step forward compared to the previous Allen organ.
I'm sure he will also have a much higher reliability.
Many congratulations to Johnson Ferry Baptist Church for his new organ!
I watched that video last night....thanks Admin..... I am really impressed how authentic that Walker sounds! I thoroughly enjoyed the concert and Samuels Metzgers playing and skills! Even the theater piece at the end the Walker did great! I personally think it puts Allen and Rodgers to shame.
The Walker sounds very good. I would be surprised if it didn't sound better than a 20 year old Allen. As has already been said, the best way is to hear it in person. I found the following quote on YouTube regarding the old Allen and the new Walker. It raises a question I've heard before about the level of support that Walker gives to their organs. Do they still have parts for every organ they have built? I don't know. Notice this individual says the failure with the Allen was NOT HEAT RELATED. I do not endorse the following quote. I'm just sharing for the sake of discussion:
“I'm one of the technicians who maintained this instrument. The organ used TT-4 boards with the infamous voicing pots that would get dirty and subsequently fail after 30 years of use. The 26 boards that failed had been failing for years and never replaced; they had accrued in number during that time. There was no voltage surge or lightning strike. The factory offered to repair them all for FREE and the organist instead swindled the church into buying a Walker for thousands more. Good luck to them when something fails on that organ, and they can't get parts to fix it. I predict it won't last half the time that the Allen did. The Allen organ now belongs to a dealer in Charlotte and is back to 100% functionality.”
Goes to show just how difficult it is to get 100% accurate and reliable information about such things. Even among techs who have seen the Allen at JFBC there might be differences of opinion as to why it was in such poor shape. We may never know the whole story, and indeed the story may be so complex that one may have to pick among several possible factors in the premature replacement of the organ.
Also illustrates how little is actually known about Walker. I can only say that the Walker sounds I've heard (including one large fully digital organ, big hybrid organs, and numerous stops added to pipe organs) are excellent in every way. But then, digital sampling and rendering are fully mature technologies, and even a cheap discount store keyboard sounds utterly amazing compared to the stuff you could buy a couple decades ago at any price. Hard to say if the Walker tone generation is better or worse than anyone else's, since the audio system, speaker placement, and voicing are probably more responsible for the final results than the technology itself.
I tend to think that JFBC, like many other churches I know about, truly did neglect to maintain the organ in top shape, being content to settle for having "most" of it working "most" of the time. The only TT-4 organ I've worked on, a small one, had never been serviced in over 30 years of use until we worked on it a couple years ago, and it had LOTS of problems by then -- some stops completely dead, many stops with a dead region or two (bad pots), a dead amp or two -- as would any organ after 30+ years without a service call. It's really quite normal and understandable that the Allen had gone downhill if the church simply put off needed repairs or board replacements until the thing was half dead. Not surprising then that the church was easily persuaded that it was beyond repair or that it wasn't worth fixing.
As to Walker's parts availability, we haven't had any problem getting parts from them on the odd occasion we were called to service for them. The guys and gals I've talked to over there seem eager to go out of their way to make customers happy, even to the point of providing some parts free of charge or at very little cost, even when an organ is well over 10 years old (that has happened in at least two instances with us).
But you sure can't go wrong with Allen's iron-clad promise to have parts for all their organs. So far they've never let me down, though Allen parts can be pricey, as we know. And it is still exceedingly rare to have to replace an expensive board in any Allen. They build them to last a long time.
If you look at post 27 below, it seems that the tech was right. Being a tech, he could've been a little more restrained in the next-to-last sentence and the one before it, and "swindled" was probably unwise, but what you quoted now seems to be true.
Looks like you’re enjoying the discussion, but you haven’t signed up for an account yet.
Tired of scrolling through the same posts? When you create an account you’ll always come back to where you left off. With an account you can also post messages, be notified of new replies, join groups, send private messages to other members, and use likes to thank others. We can all work together to make this community great. ♥️
We process personal data about users of our site, through the use of cookies and other technologies, to deliver our services, personalize advertising, and to analyze site activity. We may share certain information about our users with our advertising and analytics partners. For additional details, refer to our Privacy Policy.
By clicking "I AGREE" below, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our personal data processing and cookie practices as described therein. You also acknowledge that this forum may be hosted outside your country and you consent to the collection, storage, and processing of your data in the country where this forum is hosted.
Tweet
Comment