What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
I have played some pretty bad scratchy string stops in my time. I dislike Bourdon 16ft where you can't actually hear the bottom notes. Screechy Mixtures.
Analogue organs, especially older ones where there isn't much difference between the timbre of the stops, only volume.
Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
I've been playing a 2m/p tracker organ around the corner for the past few weeks now. I was kind of disappointed that it had no string stops or celestes, but I was really disappointed to find out that the 16' Posaune is the... ugliest reed I've heard to date. From the sounds of it, it has half length resonators, probably shoved in some poorly acoustic corner. The sound it makes, it's loud, and obnoxious- even with full organ, it manages to outgrowl everything...
What I wouldn't give for a nicely voiced 16' Fagot.
Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
[quote user="myorgan"]
[quote user="Don Furr"]To each his/her own but I'll avoid a Quint if at all possible. 98% of Quints I've heard....I didn't like.
[/quote]
Tell us what made the other 2% stand out!
[/quote]
I've only found a few Quints that seem to blend well with other stops. Most Quints just don't work for me in a registration.....something about the harmonics. To me they're just a slow, dull stop.[N]
Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
I strongly dislike a thick tubby 16' manual stop,especiallywhen it's the only 16' manual flue on the Great.I find such a stop particularly useless and wasted on an electonic, where 16' manual stopstend to be muddy anyway. (IMHO)
A well-crafted 16' manual double of string or soft principal tone is of course useful for rounding out the chorus at FF levels and above. But too many electronics have been built with a Bourdon at 16' on the Great. Yuck!
John
John
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Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
Do electronic stops count? If so, the 8' 'festival trumpet' I had on a 'toaster' definately qualified.
I don't think I've ever heard such an offensive sound before from any instrument. Sounded like a trumpet hooked up to a jet engine.
'Real' stops. Definately the Wicks practice organ I have upstairs; if I had to choose one specific stop, it'd be the 'larigot' 1/3/5 stop the darn thing has. Lack of wind pressure makes it absolutely unplayable and gives the thing a horrible hollow tone. It's like someone followed the music and wrote perfect fifths for every single note!
Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
The worst electronic stop I've come across was a 32 Contra Bombarde which uncannily like someone was "letting off" wind (fart). I never used it because it just didn't seem right in a Holy place of worship.
I findstops on the Swell, like the 16 Bourdon,next to useless. Perhaps its my technique but I just can never find a place for them in whatever I play.
I've noticed that the 16 foot manual stops (like 16 Double Diapason)get a lot of use by keyboard-only playing organists who use it to fool people into thinking the pedals are being used. Likewise, if these people are playing on the swell, then the 16 Bourdon will be used a lot too.
1971 Allen Organ TC-3S (#42904) w/sequential capture system.
Speakers: x1 Model 100 Gyro, x1 Model 105 & x3 Model 108.
Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
I dislike buzzy sounding strings on the toaster organs. A lot of organs from years back just had horrible strings that were far from their intended purpose.In that case I do prefer an all flute organ that you can form a couple of decent sounding solo reeds. With those you need the fractional pitches, and many analog electonic organs had them for that reason.
I, too, prefer a 16' Violone on the Great sounds much better on the electronic organs. I agree with jbird here.
James
Baldwin Church Organ Model 48C
Baldwin Spinet 58R
Lowrey Spinet SCL
Wurlitzer 4100A
Crown Pump Organ by Geo. P. Bent, Chicago, Illinois
Organs I hope to obtain in the future:
Conn Tube Minuet or Caprice even a transistor Caprice with the color coded tabs
Gulbransen H3 or G3, or V.
Wurlitzer 44, 4410, 4420, ES Reed Models, 4300, 4500, Transistor Models
Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
[quote user="soubasse32"]The Quintadena.[/quote]
I certainly agree there. I don't know why it was ever invented.
However, the worst stop on a pipe organ that I can remember was on a small three manual Moller. It was called Bombarde 16' and had been extended from the Solo Tromba 8' on the Great. It was too loud and disgusting to use except with full organ while the congregation was singing at full volume. The Great also had 4' and 16' Clarinet stops drawn from the choir Clarinet, I guess with the idea that, used with the Tromba, the Great would have a full reed chorus. The Choir division was physically located right under the Great, and the Clarinet was on the back wall of the choir, with the ceiling open to the Great above, so that it actually expressed with both the Great and the Choir!
For some reason, I did not like that organ.
Mike
My home organ is a Theatre III with an MDS II MIDI Expander.
I also have an MDC 10 Theatre spinet.
Re: What's the WORST stop on an organ have you ever played/avoided?
There was a three-manual pipe organ, late 19th c. American, with a Quintadena 8' on the Swell. I rarely used it. It sounded nice, though; ... it could have possibly blended with the Salicional 8' also on the Swell, but I didn't try that combination.
The worst stop, though? Certainly not the Swell 16' Bourdon on the three-manual I currently play. When trackers break on the tenor keys, I can compensate by playing an octave higher with the 16' Bourdon drawn. Otherwise, I'd rarely use it.
But the question, alas! The worst stop... I can't say there's any stop on a pipe organ I've played that I've disliked. It may have rare practical application. I guess there are some Mixtures I dislike when they're too shrill, or when they're re-voiced and lose their originally-intended character.
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