New! Rodgers Imagine 351D & 351T

[nullogik]

Rodgers will be launching the new Imagine range of organs in September with the 351D (drawstop) and 351T (tab).

Witness a new standard in digital and hybrid organs with the Imagine series

Rodgers' newest 3-manual organs: the Imagine 351D (drawknob) and 351T (tab), are designed to captivate organists, organ enthusiasts and audiences/congregations worldwide. They feature the exquisite Rodgers sound, endless musical possibilities, a stunning console, and an array of high-quality innovative features.

• 323 choices at your fingertips
• High resolution colour lcd menu
• Organ type pistons to immediately access 4 distinct organ styles
• 2.1 internal audio system
• 2-14 channel external audio
• Pipe compatibility

I see there is a new colour screen that replaces the old black and white display which I suppose is an answer to Allen's touchscreen Genisys display. From the few glimpses on the video of the Rodgers UI, it appears to have a modern looking appearance with graphics/animations that wouldn't look out of place on a smartphone whereas the Allen UI looks very dated, like something out of Windows 3.1:



Given people have become accustomed to high end graphics and animations because of smartphones, I felt it was missed opportunity by Allen not to give the UI a swish and visually more appealing appearance without sacrificing ease of use and functionality.

I wonder where in the existing range the Imagine series will slot in? Perhaps between the largest Inspire organ (3 manual, 43 stops) and the smallest Infinity (3 manual, 61 stop). It would make sense as the -51 model number would imply it has 51 stops which is sort of half way between the two organs mentioned above. Interesting to note also that Rogers mentions hybrid organs in their tagline.

More info here and In September when it official launches:
http://www.rodgersinstruments.com/ne...-reality-video

[jbird604]

Intriguing! Perhaps this new line is going to replace the Artist series, as you suggest, in between the Inspire and the Infinity. ("Artist" name is out of step with the trend to name them all starting with the letter "I"...)

I do like the look. While I'm not a fan of the lighted drawknobs, it is nice to see the same model available with lighted tabs in side jambs.

The four organ "types" on pistons, presumably replacing the "voice palette" feature that has been a Rodgers staple for 30 years -- that would be an improvement IMHO. With the palette system, each knob or tab might have two or more "hidden" stops behind it, and you actually couldn't be sure what stop would come on when you drew it. Whatever it was used for the last time will still be there. There was actually one knob engraved "flute" that had a REED hidden behind it on one Rodgers I owned. Imagine the thrill of wanting a flute and getting a trumpet! The organ "type" concept is definitely borrowed from Johannus, but is something Rodgers should've done a long time ago. At least each knob will tell you what general voice you'll get, even if it's the German or French version instead of the English or American as engraved.

I'm liking Rodgers organs more, the more they become Johannus-like instead of Roland-ish. Rodgers has always had a better sound in headphones than Allen, and they also seem to integrate their reverb better. Typically they have much more accessible voicing controls too. I sure could enjoy one of these at home!

[Dewey643]

Not a fan of lighted drawknobs,either!

[jbird604]

And they're here! Now available. I haven't followed the links yet, but I assume there may be some video to watch with demo music. Interesting product. Hope they do well with it.

http://www.rodgersinstruments.com/or...magine-series/

[jbird604]

Well, I don't see any videos yet. Surely that will be coming soon. Or maybe they have put them up somewhere else. Anybody seen one?

[toodles]

I like the stoplist better than what I've seen lately from either Allen or Rodgers. I still prefer the look of Allen's LED rockers than the Rodgers lighted tabs but still better than lighted drawknobs. I wonder if a similar Johannus series will be introduced.

[jbird604]

I agree. Very nice stop list and attractive look. On the Rodgers website this series appears just under the Infinity, so it's probably going to be pricey.

[nullogik]

There is one video on Youtube:

[voet]

I noticed that the keyboards give when he plays them in the video. I was unimpressed with the sounds I heard on this video. The instrument might have been shown better with a different selection(s),

[myorgan]

Ummmm. OK.

I think I would have liked the demo better if the gimmicks had been left out. I liked the ensemble, but it was never alone so I had difficulty hearing the nuance of the sounds. I would be very curious to try one of these instruments. The timpani wasn't bad.

Michael

[nullogik]

I'm not keen on the execution of the lighted tabs. At 4:53 you can see the light from a lit tab spreading under the neighboring unlit ones making them look like they are semi-lit. There is no isolation of each individual light source to prevent "spillage". Viscount does lighted rocker tabs very well that don't suffer from the same spillage of light. Maybe just me nit-picking but little things like that annoy me.

They must want to sell this organ on to a customer in good condition because at 5:05 you can see they have forgotten to remove the protective plastic from at least the nearest two expression shoes! :-)

[michaelhoddy]

I agree on the look and the stoplists. Very nice, and the console looks very dignified and clean. It's nice to have just enough alternate stop lists to cover the major tonal styles, without getting gimmicky and overwhelming. Rodgers persists with their 2-rank Celestes on one knob. On Rodgers organs, is it possible to just have the Viola or the Erzahler draw without the celeste for the times you would want that?

BUT- I strongly react negatively to how the video kicks off with the fake handbells and orchestral sounds. They just never sound good this way, and not because of any fault with the samples, but rather that it's impossible to make them convincing by playing them "organistically" from a keyboard in this manner! I would also take issue with this making the organ a "contemporary" instrument, whereas exactly zero contemporary styles are played this way. But I digress. Certainly, Rodgers must know their market and this must be a selling point. For me, I'd rather hear the organ do organ stuff!

[toodles]

I got a demo from a Rodgers dealer quite a while ago, and it prominently used MIDI patches and fake reverb, so that I really couldn't hear the sound of the organ voices well--and didn't like what I did hear.

[nullogik]

BUT- I strongly react negatively to how the video kicks off with the fake handbells and orchestral sounds. They just never sound good this way, and not because of any fault with the samples, but rather that it's impossible to make them convincing by playing them "organistically" from a keyboard in this manner! I would also take issue with this making the organ a "contemporary" instrument, whereas exactly zero contemporary styles are played this way.

Has anyone been to a church service that uses these instrumental sounds generated from an organ and more importantly heard it done well? Allen make a big deal of these features but who really uses them? Are they such a big selling point?

A traditional "organ and choir" service would not use such sounds, they'd stick strictly to organ stops.

A contemporary church service would have a praise band made up of real guitars, drum kit and a keyboardist who would be using a Roland, Korg or something similar. I doubt the keyboardist would choose to use the organ to generate these sounds and be sat high up in the organ loft or to one side of the sanctuary away from the rest of the band. Unless the keyboardist is also the resident organist (which I think is very rare) I doubt they'd be comfortable at an organ console or be familiar with one. Such bands in my experience often use and provide their own personal instruments, speakers and mics which they are comfortable with.

A church service with an orchestra...well they'd use a real orchestra and those with fewer resources generally tend to a have a handful of parishoners who play a violin, trumpet etc. along with the organ. Would you really want to add synthetic orchestral instruments to that?

The instrumental ones sound fake and unconvincing to me be it in that Rodgers video or the Allen ones. I can't imagine a situation where I would use them in a convincing and effective way but maybe it is because to me they sound so bad. Anyone woven in a thunderclap, round of applause, honky tonk piano or some of the other more gimmicky sounds into a church service? Perhaps I have a closed mind and someone can enlighten me to how they can be used effectively and convincingly. I am willing to learn!

[Admin]

Look how the keyboards sag when played @ around 4:25 in the video.
I'm afraid that MIDI voices on digital organs are here to stay, as much as I hate to say it. It's a sales point for the uninitiated and costs next to nothing to implement. I shudder at the thought of how these voices will be employed during a church service. Kettle drums in the pedal part of hymns? You betcha!

[myorgan]

Look how the keyboards sag when played @ around 4:25 in the video.

Admin,

I didn't notice that. Good eye!

Michael

[jbird604]

We helped install a huge new Rodgers ($250,000) a couple years ago that was heavily decked out but for some reason was equipped with pretty flimsy Fatar keyboards that bounced just like that. Rodgers had us reinforce the keyboard frames with something, forgot just what we did. But the problem is how poorly the keyboards are supported in the center. A stiffener or extra mounting bracket out in the middle will help with that. I thought they were going to modify all their keyboards to fix that, or at least that was the impression I got from Rodgers service when we called about it. Odd that they would let this be shown in a demo.

[jbird604]

Absolutely agree about the MIDI sounds. At first I was intrigued by the possibilities of MIDI, thought "orchestral strings" or "pads" would be a nice sound to mix with or use instead of organ strings and flutes, even tried using "solo violin" or some such MIDI sound as a solo stop for an organ piece. And maybe it did seem kinda cool at first. Especially back when the organ I was playing was pretty lousy, and these "new" sounds offered some needed variety and sparkle.

But my interest quickly cooled when I finally had a respectable modern Allen in church. The percussions (handbells, harpsichord, celesta) and orchestral second voices (orch oboe, orch flute, brass choir, etc.) proved pretty useless. And the dozens of similar effects on the Expander were likewise superfluous. I wound up using regularly only ONE sound I draw from MIDI -- my Festival Trumpet -- and ONE of the percussions on the organ -- Chimes.

Organ companies probably feel they are damned if they do and damned if they don't, since "everybody" touts that kind of stuff these days. But I agree on the demo video -- would be so nice to hear an organ demoed as an ORGAN without that noise that, for all the reasons given above, won't actually be used in anybody's service. I suspect that organ companies believe most of the sales these days are going to churches that are on the fence about keeping an organ, and having some trinkets might help convince them that the organ can do what they thought they wanted a keyboard for.

Perhaps there will be a resurgence of interest in organs without all that extraneous nonsense. Organs like the custom TT-4 Allens we've often discussed -- that make authentic ORGAN sounds but totally dispense with the frivolous toys.

[toodles]

I think organists who regularly play theatre stylings (in or out of church) find some of the percussions very useful even in church music. For example, an organ harp (chrysoglott in theatre organ terms) used to be a somewhat common percussion on church organs; it can be nice for an arpeggio or to accent an accompaniment line. Chimes, too, can be used "orchestrally"--i.e., as an accent rather than a full melody line.

Like many things, moderation is best.

[Admin]

I think organists who regularly play theatre stylings (in or out of church) find some of the percussions very useful even in church music. For example, an organ harp (chrysoglott in theatre organ terms) used to be a somewhat common percussion on church organs; it can be nice for an arpeggio or to accent an accompaniment line. Chimes, too, can be used "orchestrally"--i.e., as an accent rather than a full melody line.

Like many things, moderation is best.

I agree. Chimes are certainly appropriate and common in worship instruments. Harps, decidedly less common for church organs, but are very often found on Symphonic Organs, and certainly could be tastefully (and by that I'm thinking sparingly) employed in a worship setting.

Leo Sowerby's Carillon calls for both Chimes and Celesta, or Harp, so these voices must have been at least somewhat common on organs when the piece was published in 1920 .

[Admin]

There's a description of the organ here
https://www.marshallandogletree.com/blank-rr8oz
but alas not a specification. The organ has 24 channels and 34 speaking stops with 37 alternates.

[myorgan]

The organ fits the space. It's not overly reverberant, but not dead either. I'd be curious to hear how it sounds in a packed house. I would think the sound would be a bit more dry than empty.

Michael

[jbird604]

This is not a church, of course, and looks to be a fairly small space. While more reverb enhances choral and congregational singing in church, we don't normally expect the same in a recital organ. The M&O samples probably have at least some sustain tails, if they are like nearly all the sample sets I've tried out. Not "wet" in the sense of bringing the acoustics of some big church into the hall, but with enough natural decay to make the sound more acceptable in the fairly dry space of a school auditorium.

But what makes that organ sound so good IMHO is that every stop seems to be so beautiful all by itself. If that were a small pipe organ, it would have to be regulated to absolute perfection and would require almost daily tuning and voicing to prevent annoying discrepancies from creeping into the sound. Such faults would be extremely disturbing in a small and somewhat dry room like that.

[voet]

Leo Sowerby's Carillon calls for both Chimes and Celesta, or Harp, so these voices must have been at least somewhat common on organs when the piece was published in 1920 .

Sowerby used the chimes very effectively in the pedal at the end. In the two voice pedal part the upper voice plays the chimes, and the lower voice plays the bass. Unfortunately, some digital organs extend the range of the chimes, so that both voices play chimes. Just because you can do something when designing a digital organ does not mean you should. The chimes on the organ at St. James Cathedral during Sowerby's tenure did not play below tenor G.

[Admin]

Good point regarding the compass for these percussions, although I've not personally encountered an organ where the chimes have been extended to the lower octaves. The likelihood of this occurring with MIDI voices, however, is almost certain.

[voet]

One of the E. M. Skinner sample sets has done this, which is annoying because this is a perfect organ for playing Sowerby's Carillon. It has chimes and a harp/celesta. You can get around the extended compass by coupling the chimes from the Great, but you cannot draw the chimes stop in the pedal if you want the desired effect.

[Hamman]

Where's the Leslie Speaker?=-O Couldn't pass up the opportunityX-(