Advice on acquiring a new organ
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    Unfortunately, when you take a job, someone - be it pastor, priest, committee, or donor - has already made the choice for you as to what you will play. If you are lucky, you may get the powers that be to buy an instrument more to your liking - again, if you are lucky. I am playing a 1953 Schantz that was purchased and installed when I was 6 years old. There is nothing wrong with it, other than it is a small instrument. I don't have en chamade jet exhausts or anything similarly exotic, but it still works and is adequate for Sunday worship.
    Thanked by 1Andrew Motyka
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,394
    Compromise might be necessary because of budget, space, acoustics, etc., but it shouldn't be preferred.

    Like cremation.
    Thanked by 2Andrew Motyka Gavin
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    Sounds like a good time to break out the Mass of Cremation. ;-)
  • jim19130
    Posts: 12
    Hi. I certainly didn't mean to insult anyone with the term dinosaur. I meant to convey the point, as others seems to suggest, that this type of product is quite good and is making great sounds possible for money starved parishes--like in inner city parishes that are desperate for funds like St. John's (original post) in Philly and where I play.

    I agree with others -- it's not all or nothing. If you are fortunate enough to have a pipe organ with serious manual and pedal divisions to play classic music, it's great. But I have been asked to play too many times on really bad Allen or Rodgers organs, and it's impossible to play serious music and be satisfied. HW or Walker would have made the situation wonderful.

    I love pipe organs, and the idea of playing a serious pipe organ for a parish is something most organists can only dream of. But, there are alternatives to spending a half million dollars. All I'm saying is that parishes need quality alternatives and organists have to be able to handle and accept them.
    Thanked by 2R J Stove Andrew Motyka
  • Mad_Dan_EcclesMad_Dan_Eccles
    Posts: 51
    I listen to talk radio.


    I'm not sure there's a cure or even a treatment for that.

    In terms of HW and other similar programs, my real concern with this approach is that while it is highly customizable and fun to tinker with, this ease of tinkering could possibly lead to a H/W implementation becoming the domain of the tinkerer and DIY organist. Organist/tinkerer leaves, no one knows the software, organ falls out of use - there is a rather limited level of commercial support for complete H/W instruments.

    We have gone a long way from the question originally asked haven't we?
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    'xactly.
  • hartleymartin
    Posts: 1,447
    I'm not convinced that Hauptwerk is a good idea for a parish church unless it is set up by a company who will act as technicians/servicemen, etc.

    Far better to get a good digital organ which you can turn on and play without worrying about settings.

    Far better still to get a good pipe organ which has been designed for the space.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    >>Far better to get a good digital organ which you can turn on and play without worrying about settings.

    You can do that with HW, if you know what you are doing.

    Actually- you could, theoretically, create an HW organ with a headless display and hide the guts in the cabinet and no one would ever know.
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    Headless display?
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    In my late teens, I worked with a local organ builder/technician who was in his mid-seventies and with over 50 years of experience. A company built a rather complicated pipe organ enclosed in a ridiculously small space. The old guy gruffly said, "Who the hell can service the thing?" Good point. The same with HW. It may be technically advanced, but who is going to keep it playing? Any instrument whether pipe or electronic is, for practical purposes, only as good as the service it gets.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    >>Headless display?

    You can set up your OS to launch particular programs at startup- in this case, Hauptwerk. You can also set up midi-enabled switches (disguised as draw bars or rocker switches or organ presets or anything else) to activate both HW and PC functions, including computer shutdown. You can also have the computer activate display lights or digital readouts or whatever else you might want/need. So the operation can be done entirely without a monitor (thus, headless).

    And if the computer isn't being used to access the internet, and no one is installing files on it or using it for other purposes, the chances that it is going to suddenly become obsolete or break in a few years is pretty minimal.

    I don't think this kind of setup is ideal by any stretch- but I'm still of the very strong opinion that something very serviceable could be put together for a few thousand dollars.

    The possibilities of future service and parts availability is only an issue in an expensive, permanent situation- at which point I feel you really ought to be thinking about a REAL organ.

    If you're going to have all those problems for $50,000, it seems dumb. If you can get a temporary solution into place for $5,000, it seems like a better approach.
    Thanked by 1francis
  • hartleymartin
    Posts: 1,447
    CharlesW made the key point: "Who is going to service it?"

    So many organs, even electronic ones, die long before their service life should be up, because it never sees a technician who would service it. A Pipe organ which gets tuned twice a year will at the same time have the technician keep an eye on anything else which may be about to go wrong with the organ.

    An electronic instrument is often neglected because people assume that it'll just keep on going and doesn't need tuning or adjustment.
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