Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the long gap since I last posted. A lot travel kept me from doing as much as I would have liked to do. But I am back in the saddle. The manuals and thumb pistons are all wired to the serial input boards. I won't wire the toe pistons until I put the manuals back in the console because they are going into the same input board as the thumb pistons.

It took a while to figure out which wires out of several hundred could be disconnected from the stops. I hope I got it right. Anyway the stop rails are out of the console and on the worktable. The main switch wires are all bundled and attached to a wire wrap board. I will transfer them one at a time to the serial input boards. Then the real work, soldering leads to the magnets on each stop switch, so I can wire them to the magnet controller boards that I just received from Artisan Instruments. http://www.artisanorgans.com. I expect that wiring to take several weeks of my spare time.

In the meantime, I have purchased on ebay an Adcom 5 channel amplifier (130 w. per channel), a Motu micro lite midi usb interface to get the signals into the computer and a Focusrite Saffire firewire audio interface to get up to 8 channels out of the computer to the amplifier(s). So I am ahead of schedule for buying gear, if not in wiring up the inputs.

Work

Now I feel like I have started the project in earnest. I went to work on wiring the first manual. A quick continuity check to find out which wires were which, showed me that nothing was simple. Allen certainly had a reason for wiring the low C to pin 35 on their connector board. C# was 37 and all was well for a few keys. Then they jumped to a different numbering sequence. About an hour with the multimeter and I had a map of the wiring for the swell. Another couple of hours and all of those wires had been transferred to the Artisan Instruments serial board.

The next evening and about 2 1/2 hours later, the great was hooked up. Now I am halfway done with the choir manual.

When the third manual is done, I will wire up the thumb pistons, then move back to the garage to connect the wires for the pedalboard. Fortunately the pedals switches are magnetic reed switches. Hooking them up should go smoothly.

Midi Input

Time to choose midi input hardware. I read everything I could reasonably find on the web and made a few phone calls. On a recent trip to the Seattle area, I decided to drop in on Artisan Instruments, Inc. in Kenmore, Washington (http://www.artisanorgans.com). Red and Mark could not have been more helpful. They explained their system and answered all of the questions I had written down, including a detailed explanation of how I could rewire and use the 90 or so stop tabs that are in my project console. Replacing those magnetic stop tabs would have dealt a severe blow to my project budget. I got to see some of their work and hear a great demonstration of their five manual midi organ. Now I wonder if three manuals will be enough.

I also liked the fact that it looked like the Artisan Organ serial input boards (see photo) could be wired to the manuals and other switches on my Allen console in a relatively straightforward manner. I ordered the first round of input boards which arrived promptly in less than a week.

Manuals Out At Last

After disconnecting hundreds of wires, the manuals are finally out of the console and out of the garage. They are on my makeshift work table, ready for wiring to the input boards. As I tried to check continuity of the switch on the low C, I discovered that it was neither number 1 on the keyer card nor number 61 (really 68 because Allen skipped a few). That would be too logical.
Low C was actually number 35.

It looks like I will have to check quite a few, if not all of the wires as I begin to wire up the manuals for midi input. Oh well, what would be the fun of everything being easy.

Spoke Too Soon

The easy part? Not quite. I mistakenly thought removing the wires would be simple because I could find bundles of wires from each of the manual, pedals etc. going to pc boards on the organ console.
Allen had done a magnificent job of bundling the wires, wrapping them every two or three inches with nylon ties and affixing them neatly to the console with wire ties. Unfortunately, the neatly wrapped bundles often were commingled with bundles from other parts of the organ. To get them apart meant disconnecting the ties and untangling wires from different sources. Very doable but it took a few hours more than I anticipated. In the end I had to disconnect the toe piston wires from the wire-wrap connection board to which they were attached. Hopefully I can visually follow them from the switches to attach them to the input cards. I was able to save the pedal wires attached to their wire-wrap board. So the numbers are still available to reattach to the input cards.

Quite a few miscellaneous wires are still dangling from the console. Most of them will not be needed for the midi installation.

The Easy Part

First the easy part--stripping out the unnecessary wiring and old pc boards. The main computer parts, amplifiers, power supply and other things of value had been taken from the Allen console before I acquired it. But it still had a lot of leftover miscellaneous boards and wiring. There are two double panels that swing out from the back. Each had been covered with electronic parts. Most of it is junk that has been quite easy to remove. The space on the panels is much more than should be needed for the midi connector boards and encoders that I plan to install, so I will remove both sets of double panels.

One group of parts that have already proven helpful are the "keyer" boards, an A and a B board for each manual and the pedalboard. Although they will not be part of the final organ, they each contain numbered wires from the respective manual. Hopefully I can check the continuity with a multimeter and confirm which end is the lowest note and which the highest and then transfer the wires to the midi input boards (more on them later). Because the connectors are in order 1 through 61 or 1 through 32, I believe I won't have to check each wire. Hooking up the manuals and pedalboard should go faster.

A new project

Within days of stumbling across the website for Hauptwerk virtual organ software (http://www.crumhorn-labs.com) and after spending hours tracking down everything I could find about midiizing an organ console, I made arrangements to purchase the console of an Allen 1203 three manual organ. The amps, power supply and sound generation units were gone. The manuals, pedals, stop tabs appear to be in good shape. My plan is to hook up midi encoders to each of them, purchase a dedicated computer, Hauptwerk and an appropriate pipe organ sample set, hook up a sound system and see what we have. Sounds simple, so why do I expect complications. Here is a picture of the console.

I am looking for advice on midi encoder cards. There seem to be several types and systems available. Anyone with experience with any particular system, please let me know.