Digital to pipe organ

[Guest]

Hello folks,

I have a Rodgers 525 digital organ with midi in out and thru. Bought it a few years ago to use in my funeral home for services. This past week, I found a small Wicks pipe organ, built in 1949. It is a single manual 3 rank instrument, works great and has been serviced fairly regularly. This pipe organ has no pedal board, but has an automatic bass stop. I would like to control the pipe organ from the Rodgers organ and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions of the best way to accomplish this. I live in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan Canada, and as such, good organ technicians are not nearby. The closest is in Saskatoon, nearly 3 hours away. Any suggestions of the best way to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated. I am also a piano tuner/technician, and am able to tune the instruments to each other.

Thanks,
Blair

[arie v]

Blair,

What you want can be accomplished, but likely not in the most user friendly way.

First of all, the Rodgers 525 was not designed to have pipes added to them. It does have MIDI, so that is a start.

You don't state whether the Wicks is unified, or straight. If unification is part of the equation, you will need some sort of programmable console computer, or driver board(s). You will need a separate stop box to handle the stops.

If you are serious about this and want a seamless addition of pipes to a digital organ, you may want to look into getting a different digital organ.

AV

[PeteKnobloch]

With Midi out you should be able to use this to interface with pipes fairly easily. And yes you will have to add switches to control the extra pipe stops. With the small Wicks organs they usually have one magnet for each pipe and can be unified quite easily. Just use a few driver cards and parallel the outputs to the magnets. You might try looking into the Artisan at http://www.artisanorgans.com/ There uMidi product can be bought and configured to work with your current electronic organ. The little controller boards do all of the pitch selections and unification functions that you will be adding without using a PC. You will be using the PC to configure and program the little units. It will be an adventure for you since they just supply the boards and programming examples/utilities but the rest of it is a DIY project. Great for a learning experience.

Pete

[Guest]

HI Arie,

Don't know if you remember me or not, I helped you out in Hamilton once with some speakers in a church, I think it was on King St. I am not sure if the organ is unified or not, how does one determine that? Anyhow, now that I have re-installed the pipes and reconnected all of the key contacts, (little cotter pins ), I now have 2 ciphers that I cannot seem to correct by adjusting the pipes a bit. What is the most likely cause of this?

[arie v]

Blair,

I have a vague recollection of meeting someone, and if you are sure it was me, I guess then we have met.

About unification - if the organ is 3 ranks and has 3 stops, then the organ is straight. If the organ has 3 ranks and has more than 3 stops on the stop rail, then it is unified. Unification means extending ranks, and having them play at various pitches. In other words a flute rank could show up on the stop rail as an 8', 4', 2' 2 2/3'.

Ciphers can be caused by a number of things. Besides keying issues, it is likely a sticking magnet, some dirt fell in the pipe hole, or the pad on the magnet moved and no longer sealing the pipe hole. Should be easy enough to sort out.

AV