[rodgersorganusers] Re: Analog

I have been reading the analog versus pipe versus
digital discussion with much interest.  I started my
Rodgers selling career in 1973 in San Diego where I
had the privilege of working and learning from someone
who understood how to speaker these old 990/330
instruments and how to voice them.  We never attempted
to sum down the number of channels and were very
generous with the numbers of speakers we used.  Using
more rather than less seemed to always work best.  The
owner would then spend days and days voicing these old
beasts.  However, he would only spend a couple of
hours at a time doing this as ones ears tire of the
sound.

Today as the largest Rodgers dealer in the country, my
partner and I still tend to use many speakers in our
installations.  Most of our 927 to 967 installations
are at least 16 channels and a number of them go up to
the full 28 available channels.  And, again, we spend
much time in the voicing of these instruments and
spreading the various Flute and Principal choruses
around so that an entire chorus is not speaking
through just a channel pair.

One of the biggest problems I have noted in my 30
years in this business is with dealers who tended to
sum down the number channels on the older analog
instruments, who used other than Rodgers speakers or
had some local build home speakers in order to save
some dollars, and dealers who thought that they knew
how to voice an organ or just did not do any voicing
at all.  There were lots of those types out there. 
This problems still persists today however.  Just
because we can sell these instruments does not mean we
are voicers.  I happen to be lucky as a dealer and
have a very fine voicer (actually two).  Most dealers
do not.  In the pipe organ arena, there are probably
only a handful of really good voicers in the US.  I
realize the tools of the trade to accomplish voicing
are different between pipes and digital however the
issue of hearing and knowing how to bring it all
together is more than just the mechanical tools of the
trade to accomplish the job.

Dealers would do themselves a favor in hiring out the
voicing aspect to individuals who really under what
can be done with these new instruments and the older
analog models.  

I agree that properly speakered and properly voiced,
the old 220s, 330s, 990s were wonderful instruments.

Al 
--- noel jones <gedeckt@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> I have to agree with Ralph.  It is amazing how many
> times I hear pipe 
> organs and think they are digital...we are so used
> to differing pipe 
> from digital by listening to certain inherent
> 'flaws' in pipe tonal 
> production that digital organ now carry as well,
> that pipe organs tha 
> have these 'flaws' eliminated by design or
> engineering begin to sound 
> too precise and 'good'...
> 
> WHy are there those taht prefer analog sound?  The
> first organs to use 
> sampled chimes were often criticized..and stil are. 
> for the chimes 
> sounding too much like someone actually striking a
> chime rod...whcih of 
> course is what chimes are.
> 
> Analog intrumetns had a very difficult time
> generating the hum note of 
> the chime, that is, the note that soudsn almost an
> octave lower that the 
> struck pitch. Creating chimes out of equally
> tempered oscillators will 
> not permit quarter tones, for example.
> 
> noel jones
> 
>
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> 
> 


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