consoles that had a combination piston setter away from the console

[Mirabilis]

What builders and in what period built consoles with separate combination piston setters? Sometimes
these setter boxes are near the console and sometimes they are in a separate room quite away from
the console. In consoles like this it is not possible to simply put on a desired stop combination and
hold the setter button at the same time as holding the desired piston.

[jbird604]

When Allen first used the North American Rockwell "sequential" action in analog consoles in the late 60's it was said that the solid state system had the functionality of a large external capture system. A mechanical, fully settable action with six generals and six indepedent divisionals per division for a two-manual and pedal organ with 40 stops would require 480 flip-flop-able devices. I think each one of these flip-flops back in the pre-electronic era consisted of an armature and two coils, along with switches and wiring, power supplies, etc. Such an array would certainly fill up a good-sized room.

Of course Allen's NAR action was not the first fully electronic capture system on the market. Rodgers had been offering a solid-state capture based on IBM-style magnetic core memories for some time. I don't know whether Rodgers invented that system or borrowed it from the pipe organ field, but it could be built with enough memory inside an ordinary organ console to allow for a pretty generous capture action, at least six generals and maybe six independent divisionals per division for a three-manual organ.

Before the IBM-style magnetic core memories, I suppose there were a lot of pipe organs built with capture action systems so large they required a separate room away from the console. It would have been very hot in there too!

[beel m]

I wonder if the Rodgers "computer capture" was expandable? Before it got the big Allen (1970) Tenth Pres in Philly was *supposed* to get a big Rodgers. (Long story about which I'll be silent) Anyway, Dr Elmore told me that Rodgers would have given him 20 general pistons (vs. 10 on the Allen). 20 generals plus 5X6 divisionals plus all the reversibles and divisional cancels... and 108 speaking stops plus trems, couplers, percussions, etc etc; that would surely have exceeded the capacity of the Rodgers computer capture, no? Jan G- do you know?

When Allen first used the North American Rockwell "sequential" action in analog consoles in the late 60's it was said that the solid state system had the functionality of a large external capture system. A mechanical, fully settable action with six generals and six indepedent divisionals per division for a two-manual and pedal organ with 40 stops would require 480 flip-flop-able devices. I think each one of these flip-flops back in the pre-electronic era consisted of an armature and two coils, along with switches and wiring, power supplies, etc. Such an array would certainly fill up a good-sized room.

Of course Allen's NAR action was not the first fully electronic capture system on the market. Rodgers had been offering a solid-state capture based on IBM-style magnetic core memories for some time. I don't know whether Rodgers invented that system or borrowed it from the pipe organ field, but it could be built with enough memory inside an ordinary organ console to allow for a pretty generous capture action, at least six generals and maybe six independent divisionals per division for a three-manual organ.

Before the IBM-style magnetic core memories, I suppose there were a lot of pipe organs built with capture action systems so large they required a separate room away from the console. It would have been very hot in there too!

[jbird604]

From the look of the Rodgers core systems I've seen, they could have been built as large as necessary. They weren't designed around a packaged system, as was the Allen NAR system, but were built on open-frame boards, which could be as large as needed to hold the number of cores required, with whatever set of encoding and decoding transistors were needed for a given matrix on a separate hand-made circuit board. For the money Tenth Pres spent they probably could have had any capture action they wanted. The core memories were of course not nearly as compact as solid state RAM, so the system you describe would surely have been contained in a pretty good size external cabinet or else occupied much of the console's insides.

Wonder what made them decide to choose an Allen over Rodgers?

[Jan Girardot]

The Rodgers core memory boards were being built during my tenure at ROC. Fortunately, I was never tasked to do any repair on them, though I remember that the "girls" who assembled them were heard to complain about the job. Tedious and demanding on the eyesight!

. . . Jan

[Lucien Nunes]

In the UK, from 1929 until the late 1950s Compton built very compact electromechanical auto-setter units that did not require two magnets per settable crosspoint. They have two magnets per piston and one per stop, operating a matrix of sliding bars that engage and disengage contacts at the intersections. A typical theater-organ setter for one division of 60 stops with 10 pistons including second-touch manual-to-pedal-piston memories is about 3 feet x 16 ins x 10 ins. You could have up to 80 stops and 20 pistons on one unit.

An example of a Compton with this system in both local and remote forms is the 50rk Southampton Guildhall organ built in 1936-7. It has two consoles, a 4m theater style with 250 ordinary stopkeys and a 4m classical one with 150 Compton luminous stopknobs, The setter action for the theater console's 46 settable pistons is all within the console, consisting of six boxes: setter units for the 4 manuals and pedals and a control relay box. The classical console has 52 settable divisional and general pistons, for which the setter action is in the relay room four floors above because the Compton luminous push-on push-off stops operate via electromechanical reversers next to the relays, so the setter units are best located there.

The organist cannot tell the difference as far as the setter operation is concerned, the setter toe-piston works the same way on both consoles despite the circuitry being totally different. One advantage of the remote system is that it is totally silent, as are the luminous stops. You can press a general piston that brings on 100 stops, the console lights up like a Christmas tree but not the slightest sound is made, as all the moving parts are in the relay room. There was one other variation where a remotely installed setter was required to operate stopkeys in the console, due to lack of space. However long wiring runs would necessitate a relay for each stop in the console, partially negating the space saving.

Lucien

[beel m]

John, I can tell you in a PM if you're curious, but out of respect for the memory of my late teacher, I wouldn't say it on a public forum...

Wonder what made them decide to choose an Allen over Rodgers?