Schober Organs

[Nullifier]

I just heard about a Schober "recital" organ for sale in my state.</P>


I'm sure that someone here knows something about them so I thought I'd ask for opinions about the organ.</P>


Thanks!!</P>

[andyg]

Re: Schober Organs



Have you tried a search for Schober on the site? I just did and found that they've been discussed several times, in 78 posts in fact, so have a read through them. I can't tell you much about them other than the fact that they're all pretty old by now! 60's/70's, I think!</p>

Andy
</p>

[m&m's]

Re: Schober Organs



Those organs wereavailable in kit form, and were fairly popular in the 70's. I visited the Schober headquarters in New York several times, and was fairly impressed with the quality of sound. However, the company went out of existence in the early 80's, so the organ you are interested in would probably be at least 30 yearsold, and starting to fail electronically. There is a website for people who still buy, sell, and work on those organs, and apparently there is still some interest in them, but be aware that parts are hard to get. Many people are buying the Recital and Theatre models for conversion to Hauptwerk or something similar.</P>

[james]

Re: Schober Organs



I think you could find something else better than these IMHO. In fact, I do remember reading that Baldwin gave them some "patent rights" to some of the technology they used in their organs. Theydo sound like a Baldwin especially the older type Baldwins from that same time era. I used to have some recordsof demos of several of their models. </P>
<P mce_keep="true"></P>


James</P>

[Guest]

Re: Schober Organs



I had (or maybe still have) their demonstration LP and the book by Richard H. Dorf (president &amp; CEO). I was always impressed with the sound quality, but it's like anything else, it depends on who is at the controls and the quality of manufacture. Compared to some I have seen over the years, they were great.</p>

</p>

Randy
</p>

[davidecasteel]

Re: Schober Organs



I have a Schober Recital Model organ that I built from kits in 1964, and I like it a lot. At the time they were offered they did provide a fine-sounding instrument for a modest cost. They were, indeed, designed with some circuitry on license from Baldwin. They do have 2 different versions, the older ones have 12 Tone Generators, one for each lettered note, using divide-by-2 stages to produce all the required octaves of pitch (7, except the C has 8)--each of these boards has its own on-board oscillator to drive the divider chain; later versions had a single-board Tone Generator, which used a single 2MHz oscillator to drive a Top-Octave Generator chip that produced the 12 highest pitches, then then more IC divider circuits to divide down the octaves. Although the single-board Tone Generator utilized IC chips, the rest of the instrument was still discrete transistors. The organ uses the "Formant Principle" (also used by Baldwin) for stop creation: basic square-wave or sawtooth-wave tones are filtered by passive circuits to produce the various voices, and the result can be remarkably good. The Recital Model has all the stop filters built on identical printed circuit boards that plug into the stop tablet boards, and the content and arrangement of those stops is totally at the discretion of the owner. A Library of Stops (R) kit was available that made it possible for the builder to create his own stops and these could be substituted for the standard ones as desired. Basically, the only limitation in this regard was the availability of pitch registers (16', 8', 4', and 2' were available on all keyboards, and the manuals both also had 2 2/3').</P>


This is pretty old technology and the quality can vary a lot since they were built by owner-builders. The design is solid and capable of being very good, but I would strongly advise trying out the instrument and examining the circuit boards to determine if they appear to be well-built. (I will confess that mine don't really look all that great, but it works.) You should also know that it is possible to find these organs being given away when the owner/builder dies, so I wouldn't pay much for one. The Recital Model did not include internal speakers, so it requires external amplifiers and speakers to work. It was designed to work with standard hi-fi components available at the time, and can feed directly into the AUX inputs of most amplifiers or receivers. (You need VERY good speakers to handle those low frequencies, though.)</P>


The web site mentioned in an earlier post is http://www.users.cloud9.net/~pastark/schober.htmland it includes material about the instruments and a lot of comments from builders. There is a link on that page to a Yahoo! Group (SchoberOrgans) that is a message board; posting questions to that board will get responses from many knowledgeable persons.</P>


I hope this helps you.</P>


David</P>

[Nullifier]

Re: Schober Organs



Thanks to all of you for your replies!</P>


I haven't been able to contact the seller so this all maybe a moot point.</P>


Thanks again.</P>


Al</P>

[Nullifier]

Re: Schober Organs



I finally got in touch with the seller and she said that the organ hasn't been played since 1994 and has no speakers. She also said the price was $600 firm. I basically bid her goodday.</P>


And I thought the lady with the Thomas Celebrity who wanted $500 took the cake!</P>