I haven’t really kept track of the amount of time as I have mainly just puttered with it the last few years. Originally I had thrown it together from stuff I had leftover from other projects. It didn't sound too bad, so I left it together as a way of demonstrating how a pipe organ works. I have spent a little time on cleaning up the voicing so that the two ranks blend a bit better. The Flute is a bit raucous being that it was from an extreme Neo Baroque instrument, but it gives a percussive sound to it so I have mostly left it alone. The Viola on the other hand, took a bit to get it to speak properly on 2 3/4 inches. So, I would say between retrofitting the chests with new action units, wiring up the relay and chests, and voicing/repair of the pipe work, about 150 hours. It takes only about 3 hours to assemble and tune it in a new location.
Thanks for the quick reply. One of the outlet boxes does have the flapper door. Thanks for the tip. I’m going to build a silencer box to Incase the blower, which worked well in the past.. I’ll add a cooling fan to aid in keeping it cooler. Thanks again.
MIDI is actually fairly simple, at least from the user standpoint. It stands for Music Instrument Digital Interface. Most modern keyboards, synths, digital pianos, etc. are equipped with it. It allows for instance, a keyboard to communicate with another instrument such as a synth or sound module so as to play the device from the keyboard. It also allows the music data from a keyboard or other device to be recorded, edited, and played back from a computer. MIDI data can even be streamed over the internet allowing a musician in one location to play a concert on a MIDI equipped instrument in another.
@@Art_Thompson Thanks for the kind and informational remarks. I am NOT a musician, just an electronic enthusiast. I kinda know what MIDI is and basic understanding. It's the setup you used there, like all the interfaces, translation boxes, etc. Pretty cool.
Those MIDI boards provide an electronically analog interface to drive the solenoids which control the airvalves. It are all premade modules which you just have to provide power and the MIDI signal cable. What you end up with is that a keypress on any key on the keyboard results in an electronic output pin becoming high. So pretty straight forward. But a very interesting organ build :-)
Beautiful! I'm wondering if you have any 2-foot or mutation stops? An 8' flute and 2' string, or 8' flute and 2' flute would be very useful. Also very lovely for solo lines would be to have a 2-2/3' (quint) stop and a 1-3/5' (tierce) stop in the flute.
I currently have a 2’ string programmed, the flute has such a loud twelfth that a 2 2/3 is not needed for the ensemble. The organ (its ranks) are probably going to be added to a five rank Wicks I am installing in our church. We have this currently set up in the church from when we used it for Christmas. ruclips.net/video/kR63wzW_-EA/видео.html
Appreciate your inventiveness. The sound of pipe organ, whatever small, is incomparable to sounds produced via a membrane (loudspeaker), and very appreciated in live performance. Did you use electromagnets in the "somieri" (air boxes), to control airflow to the pipes? Thank you for sharing it, Regards, Anthony - from the UK.
Very interesting. I've been considering doing something similar for a while - just need enough time! Are the windchests a DIY job or salvaged? I assume direct electric action. It sounds good. Is there a web site about the construction?
Yes, the action is Electro-Mechanical. I retro-fitted old Electro-Pneumatic chests with Reisner Action Units. Direct Electric is a a registered trademark of the Wicks Organ Company. (Scott Wick makes a big deal about that) Wicks magnets actually are a bit different and possibly slightly superior to the aftermarket units. Even though I can, and have, made new windchests, it makes no sense to do so if you are going to use Electro-Mechanical action. There are tons of old E-P chests available, sometimes for free. Unit pouch type action lends itself well to conversion, but you can use almost anything if you block off the channeling in the top board and/or anywhere else that can leak out to atmosphere. The only thing is that the toe board needs to be at least 1" thick for the E-M action to have enough wind expansion space. You don't want to try to build a windchest from scratch unless you have a well equipped wood shop and lots of time. (Or you really like doing that kind of stuff) Whenever I have needed new chest(s) made, I just order it from OSI. They can do it faster-better-cheaper then I can from a commercial standpoint. There are a few websites that might be helpful, just Google and you might come up with some. The best resource for someone that wishes to learn about pipe organs is "The Art of Organ Building" by Audsley, and the "Contemporary American Organ" by Barnes. Hope this helps.
Na des ist ja geil.Die Orgel haste selber gebaut war mit den Keayborts.Man kommt ja off Einfälle einfach genial super.Monika aus Dessau Instrunenten Qwälerin.👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
This is wonderful. It opens my eyes to some intriguing possibilities. I wish I had the space at home to do something like this. You mentioned the ranks came from 2 different organs. Were they instruments that were being discarded anyway? How did you find them? Also, do you have prior experience in organ building?
Unfortunately, hundreds if not thousands of organs both large and small have been broken up for parts over the last few decades. Very often, no one wants an entire organ. The larger the instrument is, the more difficult it is to find it a new home. Hence, there is quite a lot of used pipe work and wind chests around. I have bought a number of orphaned ranks on eBay or the Church Organ Trader. I do have experience in organ building, and in the past served as the organ curator at a small University. I currently have a shop in interior Alaska with space to erect several instruments at a time, along with facilities for construction and voicing.
What is the brand,type of stand? Tried to find one that's "close coupled" like that. Thx, great vid. I play for our church, but need a practice setup,again, thx.
It was this one. on-stage.com/products/view/12763 I modified it by placing the horizontal bar for the lower keyboard as far forward as it would go before hitting the clamp knob for the upper keyboard support. I then put carriage bolts through the uprights in that position. The upper keyboard horizontal bars are set as low as they will go and are tilted down, and the pedals sit in the floor legs. Not exactly AGO, but it works. Hope this helps.
I have a similar system, 13 stops, 6 ranks all MIDI controlled It's a hybrid with digital and virtual instruments. My question, The Laukuff blower seems silent in your video. I have a 3/4 HP unit and the organ is voiced at 4 inches. I have two baffle boxes and it still seems to 'rumble' a lot. Maybe you can give me a couple of tips. Thanks. I enjoyed the video.
It is not completely silent, but it is not too noticeable. This blower is the smallest size that Laukuff makes in the cast high speed style and is only about 3 1/2 “ static, so it would be much quieter than most. I have a 3/4 HP Laukuff and it is considerably louder. My 1 HP ones even more so. No where near the racket a Spencer makes though. I have found that the rumble can be due to the “lumps” in the wind that the blower produces. It can travel down the wind conductor and cause the regulator to resonate and emit the noise. The usual way to lessen this effect is to use a static regulator right at the blower and/or put flap valves on the intake (muffler box) and exhaust (outlet) so that when the blower is at idle the fan turbulence doesn’t get into the wind system and amplify the noise. Hope this helps.
The blower is a Laukhuff Ventus, and they are available from Organ Supply Industries. They are quite expensive to use for other applications, but if noise is an issue they might be worth it. Bear in mind that these blowers were not designed to run wide open, at least not on a continuous basis. At heavy load, the sound of the organ would drown out any increased noise. Hope this helps.
He only built only the chests, framing, used standard PVC for wind pipes. He built or bought a small regulators and Ventus blower. Those appear to be new. He mentioned were to locate the electronic controls and drivers for the chest magnets. If you want to make something like this be sure to get what he has - a String - Salicional or Viol and an 8' Bourdon. Both had 61 pipes. Pipes are tuned to A=440.
@@organbuilder272 I don’t believe there is a relation to the amount of pipes in a rank, and the sound of the rank. If you would have a 73 note manual then you can just extend the rank with the same shape&material of pipes but then longer or smaller.
@@Engineer9736 ----Yes...it's nice to have your own real pipes....but we are not all as fortunate as you, so Hauptwerk is a blessing for us poor folks. lol
@@jrzzrj I’m a “poor” Hauptwerk user as well 😉 But the video is about a real organ.. I could buy my own pipes, but i don’t fancy having my house filled with windchests blowers and ranks 😜
I built an organ equivalent to this one years ago. I used a very similar motor as you have in yours. Mine requires motor oil like a car engine. The oil leaks out when I put even a small amount in. It's a Ventus-Laukhuff, D-6992 organ blower. I suspect that a gasket needs to be replaced. Do you know anything about such motors? Can no longer play the organ and miss it. The organ took me 12 years to build. It has a 8' Metalgedekt & a 4' Spitzflote. It stands in an 8 foot high oak case.
I‘m German (and the name of the Stops too), so „Metallgedeckt“ (a stopped metal pipe) is the correct spelling. And (if you have umlaut) Spitzflöte. Hope your Organ will work soon.
Yes, actually there is. While some Organ Builders offer apprenticeships, this is often a hit-and-miss proposition. However just recently, the University of Oklahoma developed a school called the American Organ institute. www.ou.edu/aoi They teach all aspects of pipe organ building, maintenance and performance. It is an excellent program.
The blower is a .22 HP Laukhuff Ventus. The regulator is from OSI (Organ Supply Industries). I had previously bought the regulator for a different project but wound up not using it. That was pretty much the case with everything else. The only thing I bought specifically for this was the blower. I actually got everything except the regulator on eBay and had it shipped USPS. I live in a remote area in Alaska so it was sort of like Wiley Coyote ordering a bunch of parts and assembling them into a contraption.
I think electric action easier, it keeps out a whole lot of complicated physical challenges. But tracker action is more close to being a fully natural instrument. The idea of having beautiful music without electric assistance is something to say for. But ultimately electric action plays lighter and achieves the same goal. You can run electric cables wherever you like/need, while mechanical linkages need to be really well organised and maintained. And electric cable is mass produced 1000km a day, don’t need to think about that, while mechanical linkages have to be custom made for the entire length.
It is a Roland product (PK 25) that was an accessory for the VK 75 organ. It has been discontinued by Roland, but Viscount sells a similar unit. It is called a Pedalboard 25. They are expensive though…
It is a tapered Gamba. It was originally on about 5” WC, it is now running on about 3”. This results in a softer tone with less harmonics. The taper accentuates the odd harmonies somewhat, similar to the oboe-gamba that several manufacturers produced.
Awesome! This reminds me of commercially-available chamber organ that I was looking into for my mother back in the 80s - it was heavily unitized, with two long ranks of pipes. (Can't remember the brand.) What sort of blower is that? Did it come with either of the ranks/windchests? And did you need to make any adjustments to it to make it hit the wind pressure you needed? Cheers! (Love your collection of vintage radio gear!)
The blower (as well as most of the other parts) were obtained through eBay, believe it or not. The only thing I had on hand was one of the chest shells and the string rank. The relay came from Artsian Instruments, the new chest action units (pipe valves) and the regulator came from OSI, the keyboards and pedals came from Musicians Friend. The blower is a Laukhuff Ventus that I bought (almost new) off eBay, although OSI sells them as well. Even though I have a commercial account with OSI, the blower was cheaper than my wholesale price. It all came through USPS to a remote village in interior Alaska! Sort of like the cartoon character “Wile E Coyote” ordering all the parts for his contraptions from ACME and having them appear in the middle of nowhere. This was a spur-of-the-moment project to build an organ to take to our Christmas Bazaar to make music for the event and attract attention to the booth for our radio station. I have 4 commercially built pipe organs that I have restored in my shop, but they were much too large for this application and would take days to move and set up. (The smallest being 5 ranks and the largest 14) The organ is currently set up in our small church, we took it there for our Christmas Eve service. ruclips.net/video/kR63wzW_-EA/видео.html It is a bit out of tune in this video, as the temperature in the building was at the setback level and it was -23 outside. It also sounds a bit less rough as I have gotten a little more serious about cleaning up the voicing. As far as the wind pressure, that is determined by the regulator. Since the ranks were originally on different pressures, what I did was take the Flute which was on 2 3/4 WC and used that pressure as the staring point and re-voiced the string to speak on that pressure. The old communications equipment that is visible in the video is less than a tenth of the stuff I have hanging around. I am an electronic engineer and a broadcast and communications engineer as well as a pipe organ builder. I am however, retired from all of it and just do it for fun. Well sort of. I am the engineer for several Christian radio stations and I service the radios for our village Volunteer Fire Department. Wicks organ company was the king of unification with small organs, and they made a number of small 2 and 3 rank organs that were enclosed in a cabinet and would fit under an 8’ ceiling. Acquiring one of those would be easier than trying to build one. While you won’t have blazing mixtures and fiery solo reeds like a digital organ would, these small instruments are quite adequate for a living room. I have found that large pipe organs in residential installations tend to not be the most successful, if that is the sound you are after, a digital organ is probably best.
Yes, it appears from the specifications of your organ that you can. It does not explicitly state that the stop data is transmitted through MIDI, but I assume that since you can record a song from the MIDI out, I believe that it is. The Artisan micro midi relay system that I used can be programmed to route the key and stop data to the pipe action. While it would be preferable to activate the pipe stop from the console, and maybe be able to also deactivate the electronic voice in the organ programming, you can always play an external rank, or even an entire pipe organ just from the MIDI out.
An interesting presentation, however it would much improved if the presenter was to wear a lanyard mike so that he could be heard not have the mike behind his back.
The flute can not be played Legato - every chiff accents the entry of the note. This is just ducky but where is the Diapason - the only unimitative voice int he organ and the foundation stop of any decent organ. That spitting flute is deadly to any soft piece of music. Okay it is for fun
That is why most neo-baroque organs suck.... The chiff sounds louder in a recording than it actually is though. Diapason= way too loud for the purposes of this instrument.
The future of music!
Shows how much the acoustics of an echo-y cathedral adds to the sound!
Virgil Fox once remarked that the most important stop on the organ was the room...
very organic sound. ;) warm and bright and clear. very direct. reminds me of the practice organ at PLU in the basement.
I haven’t really kept track of the amount of time as I have mainly just puttered with it the last few years. Originally I had thrown it together from stuff I had leftover from other projects. It didn't sound too bad, so I left it together as a way of demonstrating how a pipe organ works.
I have spent a little time on cleaning up the voicing so that the two ranks blend a bit better. The Flute is a bit raucous being that it was from an extreme Neo Baroque instrument, but it gives a percussive sound to it so I have mostly left it alone. The Viola on the other hand, took a bit to get it to speak properly on 2 3/4 inches.
So, I would say between retrofitting the chests with new action units, wiring up the relay and chests, and voicing/repair of the pipe work, about 150 hours. It takes only about 3 hours to assemble and tune it in a new location.
Thanks for the quick reply. One of the outlet boxes does have the flapper door. Thanks for the tip. I’m going to build a silencer box to Incase the blower, which worked well in the past.. I’ll add a cooling fan to aid in keeping it cooler. Thanks again.
Sounds very nice.
You did very well
Greate!Very tastely sound.
So cool! Like a boombox pipe organ! LOL. Your MIDI interface stuff is way over my head! Sounded good.
MIDI is actually fairly simple, at least from the user standpoint. It stands for Music Instrument Digital Interface. Most modern keyboards, synths, digital pianos, etc. are equipped with it.
It allows for instance, a keyboard to communicate with another instrument such as a synth or sound module so as to play the device from the keyboard. It also allows the music data from a keyboard or other device to be recorded, edited, and played back from a computer. MIDI data can even be streamed over the internet allowing a musician in one location to play a concert on a MIDI equipped instrument in another.
@@Art_Thompson Thanks for the kind and informational remarks. I am NOT a musician, just an electronic enthusiast. I kinda know what MIDI is and basic understanding. It's the setup you used there, like all the interfaces, translation boxes, etc. Pretty cool.
Those MIDI boards provide an electronically analog interface to drive the solenoids which control the airvalves. It are all premade modules which you just have to provide power and the MIDI signal cable. What you end up with is that a keypress on any key on the keyboard results in an electronic output pin becoming high. So pretty straight forward. But a very interesting organ build :-)
I love this. Any chance I could contact you directly to ask a couple of questions about the electrical stuff?
That was really swell, uhh, sorry - great! rofl! Loved the vid, what a fantastic little indtrument - thanks!
Beautiful! I'm wondering if you have any 2-foot or mutation stops? An 8' flute and 2' string, or 8' flute and 2' flute would be very useful. Also very lovely for solo lines would be to have a 2-2/3' (quint) stop and a 1-3/5' (tierce) stop in the flute.
I currently have a 2’ string programmed, the flute has such a loud twelfth that a 2 2/3 is not needed for the ensemble. The organ (its ranks) are probably going to be added to a five rank Wicks I am installing in our church. We have this currently set up in the church from when we used it for Christmas. ruclips.net/video/kR63wzW_-EA/видео.html
Appreciate your inventiveness. The sound of pipe organ, whatever small, is incomparable to sounds produced via a membrane (loudspeaker), and very appreciated in live performance.
Did you use electromagnets in the "somieri" (air boxes), to control airflow to the pipes?
Thank you for sharing it,
Regards,
Anthony - from the UK.
Very interesting. I've been considering doing something similar for a while - just need enough time! Are the windchests a DIY job or salvaged? I assume direct electric action. It sounds good. Is there a web site about the construction?
Yes, the action is Electro-Mechanical. I retro-fitted old Electro-Pneumatic chests with Reisner Action Units.
Direct Electric is a a registered trademark of the Wicks Organ Company. (Scott Wick makes a big deal about that) Wicks magnets actually are a bit different and possibly slightly superior to the aftermarket units.
Even though I can, and have, made new windchests, it makes no sense to do so if you are going to use Electro-Mechanical action. There are tons of old E-P chests available, sometimes for free. Unit pouch type action lends itself well to conversion, but you can use almost anything if you block off the channeling in the top board and/or anywhere else that can leak out to atmosphere. The only thing is that the toe board needs to be at least 1" thick for the E-M action to have enough wind expansion space. You don't want to try to build a windchest from scratch unless you have a well equipped wood shop and lots of time. (Or you really like doing that kind of stuff) Whenever I have needed new chest(s) made, I just order it from OSI. They can do it faster-better-cheaper then I can from a commercial standpoint.
There are a few websites that might be helpful, just Google and you might come up with some. The best resource for someone that wishes to learn about pipe organs is "The Art of Organ Building" by Audsley, and the "Contemporary American Organ" by Barnes.
Hope this helps.
How did you and from where did you arrange the pipes
Na des ist ja geil.Die Orgel haste selber gebaut war mit den Keayborts.Man kommt ja off Einfälle einfach genial super.Monika aus Dessau Instrunenten Qwälerin.👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
This is wonderful. It opens my eyes to some intriguing possibilities. I wish I had the space at home to do something like this.
You mentioned the ranks came from 2 different organs. Were they instruments that were being discarded anyway? How did you find them? Also, do you have prior experience in organ building?
Unfortunately, hundreds if not thousands of organs both large and small have been broken up for parts over the last few decades. Very often, no one wants an entire organ. The larger the instrument is, the more difficult it is to find it a new home. Hence, there is quite a lot of used pipe work and wind chests around.
I have bought a number of orphaned ranks on eBay or the Church Organ Trader.
I do have experience in organ building, and in the past served as the organ curator at a small University. I currently have a shop in interior Alaska with space to erect several instruments at a time, along with facilities for construction and voicing.
@@Art_Thompson My guess is that the sellers of these pipe organs want too much money for them and they don't do home deliveries either.
What is the brand,type of stand? Tried to find one that's "close coupled" like that. Thx, great vid. I play for our church, but need a practice setup,again, thx.
It was this one.
on-stage.com/products/view/12763
I modified it by placing the horizontal bar for the lower keyboard as far forward as it would go before hitting the clamp knob for the upper keyboard support. I then put carriage bolts through the uprights in that position. The upper keyboard horizontal bars are set as low as they will go and are tilted down, and the pedals sit in the floor legs.
Not exactly AGO, but it works.
Hope this helps.
Nice
I have a similar system, 13 stops, 6 ranks all MIDI controlled It's a hybrid with digital and virtual instruments. My question, The Laukuff blower seems silent in your video. I have a 3/4 HP unit and the organ is voiced at 4 inches. I have two baffle boxes and it still seems to 'rumble' a lot. Maybe you can give me a couple of tips. Thanks. I enjoyed the video.
It is not completely silent, but it is not too noticeable. This blower is the smallest size that Laukuff makes in the cast high speed style and is only about 3 1/2 “ static, so it would be much quieter than most.
I have a 3/4 HP Laukuff and it is considerably louder. My 1 HP ones even more so. No where near the racket a Spencer makes though. I have found that the rumble can be due to the “lumps” in the wind that the blower produces. It can travel down the wind conductor and cause the regulator to resonate and emit the noise. The usual way to lessen this effect is to use a static regulator right at the blower and/or put flap valves on the intake (muffler box) and exhaust (outlet) so that when the blower is at idle the fan turbulence doesn’t get into the wind system and amplify the noise.
Hope this helps.
What make and model of blower motor used for this organ and where did you get it from (I would use it as a quiet air mover/fan!)?
The blower is a Laukhuff Ventus, and they are available from Organ Supply Industries. They are quite expensive to use for other applications, but if noise is an issue they might be worth it. Bear in mind that these blowers were not designed to run wide open, at least not on a continuous basis. At heavy load, the sound of the organ would drown out any increased noise.
Hope this helps.
This is a very nice little organ, how long did it take you to build it?
He only built only the chests, framing, used standard PVC for wind pipes. He built or bought a small regulators and Ventus blower. Those appear to be new. He mentioned were to locate the electronic controls and drivers for the chest magnets. If you want to make something like this be sure to get what he has - a String - Salicional or Viol and an 8' Bourdon. Both had 61 pipes. Pipes are tuned to A=440.
@@organbuilder272 I don’t believe there is a relation to the amount of pipes in a rank, and the sound of the rank. If you would have a 73 note manual then you can just extend the rank with the same shape&material of pipes but then longer or smaller.
👍...very cozy setup...now just add Hauptwerk....
Hauptwerk is technically boring. The video is interesting because it is a real organ.
@@Engineer9736 ----Yes...it's nice to have your own real pipes....but we are not all as fortunate as you, so Hauptwerk is a blessing for us poor folks. lol
@@jrzzrj I’m a “poor” Hauptwerk user as well 😉 But the video is about a real organ.. I could buy my own pipes, but i don’t fancy having my house filled with windchests blowers and ranks 😜
I built an organ equivalent to this one years ago. I used a very similar motor as you have in yours. Mine requires motor oil like a car engine. The oil leaks out when I put even a small amount in. It's a Ventus-Laukhuff, D-6992 organ blower. I suspect that a gasket needs to be replaced. Do you know anything about such motors? Can no longer play the organ and miss it. The organ took me 12 years to build. It has a 8' Metalgedekt & a 4' Spitzflote. It stands in an 8 foot high oak case.
I‘m German (and the name of the Stops too), so „Metallgedeckt“ (a stopped metal pipe) is the correct spelling. And (if you have umlaut) Spitzflöte. Hope your Organ will work soon.
Is there any training for building a pipe organ? I'm interested of learning about it.
Yes, actually there is. While some Organ Builders offer apprenticeships, this is often a hit-and-miss proposition. However just recently, the University of Oklahoma developed a school called the American Organ institute.
www.ou.edu/aoi
They teach all aspects of pipe organ building, maintenance and performance. It is an excellent program.
What did you use for the blower? Did you make the regulator from scratch?
The blower is a .22 HP Laukhuff Ventus. The regulator is from OSI (Organ Supply Industries). I had previously bought the regulator for a different project but wound up not using it. That was pretty much the case with everything else.
The only thing I bought specifically for this was the blower.
I actually got everything except the regulator on eBay and had it shipped USPS. I live in a remote area in Alaska so it was sort of like Wiley Coyote ordering a bunch of parts and assembling them into a contraption.
What is harder to make: midi controlled, or with classic keys? Ofc keys should be harder, but maby there is some special problems with midi?
no
I think electric action easier, it keeps out a whole lot of complicated physical challenges. But tracker action is more close to being a fully natural instrument. The idea of having beautiful music without electric assistance is something to say for. But ultimately electric action plays lighter and achieves the same goal. You can run electric cables wherever you like/need, while mechanical linkages need to be really well organised and maintained. And electric cable is mass produced 1000km a day, don’t need to think about that, while mechanical linkages have to be custom made for the entire length.
Is that a MIDI Pedal? If so which product is it?
It is a Roland product (PK 25) that was an accessory for the VK 75 organ. It has been discontinued by Roland, but Viscount sells a similar unit. It is called a Pedalboard 25. They are expensive though…
What string stop exactly is that
It is a tapered Gamba. It was originally on about 5” WC, it is now running on about 3”. This results in a softer tone with less harmonics. The taper accentuates the odd harmonies somewhat, similar to the oboe-gamba that several manufacturers produced.
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Awesome! This reminds me of commercially-available chamber organ that I was looking into for my mother back in the 80s - it was heavily unitized, with two long ranks of pipes. (Can't remember the brand.) What sort of blower is that? Did it come with either of the ranks/windchests? And did you need to make any adjustments to it to make it hit the wind pressure you needed? Cheers! (Love your collection of vintage radio gear!)
The blower (as well as most of the other parts) were obtained through eBay, believe it or not. The only thing I had on hand was one of the chest shells and the string rank. The relay came from Artsian Instruments, the new chest action units (pipe valves) and the regulator came from OSI, the keyboards and pedals came from Musicians Friend.
The blower is a Laukhuff Ventus that I bought (almost new) off eBay, although OSI sells them as well. Even though I have a commercial account with OSI, the blower was cheaper than my wholesale price.
It all came through USPS to a remote village in interior Alaska! Sort of like the cartoon character “Wile E Coyote” ordering all the parts for his contraptions from ACME and having them appear in the middle of nowhere.
This was a spur-of-the-moment project to build an organ to take to our Christmas Bazaar to make music for the event and attract attention to the booth for our radio station. I have 4 commercially built pipe organs that I have restored in my shop, but they were much too large for this application and would take days to move and set up. (The smallest being 5 ranks and the largest 14)
The organ is currently set up in our small church, we took it there for our Christmas Eve service. ruclips.net/video/kR63wzW_-EA/видео.html It is a bit out of tune in this video, as the temperature in the building was at the setback level and it was -23 outside. It also sounds a bit less rough as I have gotten a little more serious about cleaning up the voicing.
As far as the wind pressure, that is determined by the regulator. Since the ranks were originally on different pressures, what I did was take the Flute which was on 2 3/4 WC and used that pressure as the staring point and re-voiced the string to speak on that pressure.
The old communications equipment that is visible in the video is less than a tenth of the stuff I have hanging around. I am an electronic engineer and a broadcast and communications engineer as well as a pipe organ builder. I am however, retired from all of it and just do it for fun. Well sort of. I am the engineer for several Christian radio stations and I service the radios for our village Volunteer Fire Department.
Wicks organ company was the king of unification with small organs, and they made a number of small 2 and 3 rank organs that were enclosed in a cabinet and would fit under an 8’ ceiling. Acquiring one of those would be easier than trying to build one. While you won’t have blazing mixtures and fiery solo reeds like a digital organ would, these small instruments are quite adequate for a living room. I have found that large pipe organs in residential installations tend to not be the most successful, if that is the sound you are after, a digital organ is probably best.
I would like to add a rank of flu types to my Viscount Chorum 90dlx. Is that possible?
Yes, it appears from the specifications of your organ that you can. It does not explicitly state that the stop data is transmitted through MIDI, but I assume that since you can record a song from the MIDI out, I believe that it is.
The Artisan micro midi relay system that I used can be programmed to route the key and stop data to the pipe action.
While it would be preferable to activate the pipe stop from the console, and maybe be able to also deactivate the electronic voice in the organ programming, you can always play an external rank, or even an entire pipe organ just from the MIDI out.
@@Art_Thompson Thanks, Art.
An interesting presentation, however it would much improved if the presenter was to wear a lanyard mike so that he could be heard not have the mike behind his back.
The flute can not be played Legato - every chiff accents the entry of the note. This is just ducky but where is the Diapason - the only unimitative voice int he organ and the foundation stop of any decent organ. That spitting flute is deadly to any soft piece of music. Okay it is for fun
That is why most neo-baroque organs suck.... The chiff sounds louder in a recording than it actually is though.
Diapason= way too loud for the purposes of this instrument.
bello!?
Where did you get the pipes?