The console was the "Chapel" style console used for a number of Allen organs, including the B3, C3, TC3, TC4, etc. It is not too large and should just fit through a 36" door. The bad news: this organ has an external generator rack connected to the console with a bulky cable. If someone cut that cable the re-wiring will keep you occupied for years. The usual speaker arrangement used four mammoth "Gyrophonic Projector" cabinets plus three "Pedal" cabinets housing two 15" woofers in each.</P>
Diapason (all except Swell Geigen Principal and Viola)</P>
Flutes (all except Swell Flute 8')</P>
Celeste (Viola and Flute celeste on Swell)</P>
Thethree swell generators are under separate expression and are affected by Swell couplers at 16', 8' and 4' in all divisions. (The reed extends to 16' in the pedal via the Swell to Pedal 16' coupler.)</P>
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In my opinion this sounds better than the vast majority of Rodgers analog organs, which usually had far fewer generators, the exceptions being the Rodgers 35D (a virtual clone of the TC6) and 36C.</P>
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Keep in mind that this organ could be nearly fifty years old. My childhood church had a 1961 TC6 and they replaced it a few years ago.</P>
You're not talking about the Allen TC6 that has been "lightning damaged" on Craigslist?</p>
Unless you're just after the console and wish to gut it out, I'd stay well clear of this instrument. You'll spend a heck of lot of money (and time) putting it right, which would be better off saving for something slightly newer that is in working condition - say a large Allen MOS or ADC instrument.
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1971 Allen Organ TC-3S (#42904) w/sequential capture system.
Speakers: x1 Model 100 Gyro, x1 Model 105 & x3 Model 108.
Are you implying that it is the one on Craigslist?</P>
Granted its a beautiful console and likely very well built. But the time and effort needed to get that instrument up to a playable condition is just totally uneconomical and a complete waste of time - notice they have said in the advert it is suitable as a spares organ.</P>
Adding MIDI to analogue organs is also a time consuming job whereas Allen have MIDI kits for their ADC range and Harrison labs have kits for the MOS range of organs to make the whole process quicker and easier.</P>
I'd only take the TC6 if you were going to ditch the enitre "mechnicals" and make it into a Hauptwerk console, otherwise its wise to wait for something more suitable to come along. And frankly, I think they'd have to pay you $50 to take it away rather you pay them, since its broken, its an old analogue instrument andithas very little ifno value nowadays.</P>
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1971 Allen Organ TC-3S (#42904) w/sequential capture system.
Speakers: x1 Model 100 Gyro, x1 Model 105 & x3 Model 108.
MarkS - question for you. I think you know more about these old analogs than anybody here.</p>
You said that the TC6 had a "Swell Reed 8' (Trumpet, Oboe, Vox Humana)". Did it use the same filtering approach that the T15B did to derive a string and a trumpet from a flute rank? I can't remember what happened on the T15B if you draw all of the filter stops at the same time, but I don't believe that you got a combination of the sounds! Likewise if you pulled both the oboe and vox humana on the Tc6, did you actually hear a reasonable combination?</p>
Also I believe you posted once that the TC6 used diode keying to combine oscillator ranks...how is this reflected in the scheme you posted? Was, for example, an Oboe a lo-pass filtered/attenuated version of a raw trumpet rank ("Swell Reed") combined with 30% intensity "Swell Flue" oscillators at at 1 3/5 & 1 1/3? (just imagining how an oboe sound could be created using these schemes)</p>
The reed generators had 72 oscillators. The Trumpet, Oboe, and Vox Humana did not differ much in tone color; they may very well have been different volume levels of the same tone. So adding the Oboe to the Trumpet or Vox Humana to the Oboe increased the power, without a noticeable change in tone color. </P>
I believe that some of the flutes and diapsons used resistors to reduce power: the diapsons on the choir and swell (except separate Swell Geigen) were softer than those on the Great and Pedal, plus the Swell flutes (except separate 8') were softened. The SwellPlein Jeuwas from the soft version of the flutes at 2', 1 1/3', and 1. (I disconnected the 2' since it was already available as the Spillflute.) The Great Mixture had breaks and was also from the flute generator.</P>
Another interesting trick: the bottom (16') octave of the flute and diapson generators was shared, yet there was no break in tone color in either voice.</P>
Best combination: Swell: Geigen Principal 8', Octave 4, Plein Jeu, and Oboe 8'. These came from four separate generators and were projected through the four channels.</P>
Now ask me about our 1957 C3 that is still kicking. It's just about my age...and may outlast me.</P>
I've heard the Allen TC6 was a really good organ faithfully producing realistic pipe organ soundbut it isa beast of an organ. Are there very many in operation? I'd like to hear one.
[quote user="cantornikolaos"]I've heard the Allen TC6 was a really good organ faithfully producing realistic pipe organ soundbut it isa beast of an organ. Are there very many in operation? I'd like to hear one.[/quote]
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I've seen quite a few TC-3 and TC-4 examples, but never anything larger. I would love to see or have a go on a TC7 or TC8, but it would appear they are as rare as hen's teeth.
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1971 Allen Organ TC-3S (#42904) w/sequential capture system.
Speakers: x1 Model 100 Gyro, x1 Model 105 & x3 Model 108.
Hello, I just purchased a 1959 TC4 - the TC6's not so smaller brother. It produces good sound, but compared to a real pipe organ, (or for that matter, a virtual pipe organ) something will have to be done. It is a behemoth, in terms of weight - well over 600 lbs with pedalboard, according to Allen's spec sheet. I am going to wire mine to Jorgan in parallel to the old analog stuff with MidiBoutique's hwce bundle 3. I would imagine that the TC6, having more generators, would sound more realistic, though. Are you considering one to midify? or Are you going to play as is?
I purchased a used, disassembledTC 6 from a Rodgers dealer in the late 80's. It came with seven cabinets plus an oscillator rack and another rack for the five 100 watt amplifiers that also came with the organ. There was numberous audio cables included plus the large, thick cable that connected the organ consoleto the oscillator rack.</P>
The console WAS lheavy but the dealer loaned me his organ dollie so that my brother and myself, not large guys, could move the organ off the U Haul trailer and up a short, dirt hill to the basement entrace. We didn't have too much trouble moving it inside because of the dollie.</P>
I spent three weeks of evenings figuring out what connected to what as I didn'tsee the organ before it was disconnected. The fact thatsome of the audiocables were coded helped and I suspect most cables could be used anywhere; it was just a matter of length. Lucky, the large cablehad been laid paralell to the console and the indivdual wires were cut out of the console at the soldering block. The effect was that the wires weredifferent lengths so I picked the lowest note on the organ and found which of the wires had a signal and wired the rest of the console according to length. When done, I had about four wrong notesbut it was easy enough to fix.</P>
Several of the audio cables had been spliced into each other, like a Y, as if the organ had more speakers than the organ was designed. I never did quite understand that but after a few months of unleasing all that power in the basement I was getting sqwaks from the family so I modified the organ a bit more by adding a practice switch that only turned on one of the amplifiers (flutes) so I couldn't get carried away too far away from reality. Using the flute amp for practice made friends with the family again and I only used the full amplified power ( and all the other stops) when everyone was out of the house. My next door neighbor could clearly hear that organ or so I was informed.</P>
After connecting the organ I found it wasa bit out of tune. An organ tuner device seemeda bit expensive so I tried a guitar tuner instead. Mostly, the guitar tuner worked fine but somenotes seemed to confuse the tuner so I had the wing the tuning of these notes. This seemed to work well except that I had no idea how to tune the fractional stops except the guess at it. For all the time I had the TC 6 it never had any professional attention even when smoke came rolling out of the console one night. A simple cold solder joint ( a defect that existed from 1962) was the problembut I was playing again the next evening.</P>
The only rub I see to TC6 ownership ( and I believe the TC4) is that the organ uses many capacitors to help tune the organ and these capacitors age and change value. The effect is that in organs that haven't had these capacitors profesionally replaced at some point will sometimes quickly go way out of tolerance and suddenly you can't use the tuning knob anymore to keep that note within range and you can no longer tune that note. Then you must change out that capacitor with the proper one ( which I never had)or paralell ( or series) capacitors in an attempt to keep that curcuit within it's operating range. These capacitors were hard to find although I was told by the Allen repairman that kits were available to assist in re-tuning such notes. Fortunately, I had a radio background and had enough old capacitors around the house to fix whatever note wouldn't tune. If you do have access to old capacitors be sure to pay attention to the working voltage which is important. Over the time I owned that organ I spent more and more time tuning as the capacitors aged which wasn't a problem for me as the rack was external to the organ but in other models where those racks are internalcould be a real hassle if it happened a lot.</P>
I replaced two transistors the whole time I owned the instrument. It wasn't hard. I knew how to check transistors from being a ham radio dude and if the note does something really strange or stops working I went over to the rack, found the note and started checkingcomponents until I found the faulty one and replaced it. A multimeter is all I ever used to find problems.</P>
The sound? It was nice,full and very electronic.I have played only a few pipe organs so I can't really say how real the sound was.I wish I could have afforded to have a technician come out and tweak it but the organ worked quite well for what I bought it to do. One interesting note is that when all the amps and speakers were turned onand the rotating speakers were turning the effect was a nice theater organ sound. I enjoyed that effect often until one day I added up the power draw with everything turned on and realized that the consumption was over twice as much power as our A/C drew!! After discovering that I had to restrain myself.</P>
Oneitem I really liked was the third keyboard. I learned not to be imtimidated bylarger organs than the one I usually playedon Sundays.</P>
One downside to the TC 6 was the pedalboard. I wanted to clean under the pedals every so often and the pedals were difficult to connect to the consoleas the design is not the one Allen uses now and the wiring harness was a little too short be be "user friendly". Definitely a hassle for someone who is not a organ technician.</P>
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