Electronic organs - circuits, experiences and interests

[ppppenguin]

If we're in pipe vs electronic territory it's worth mentioning the late Carlo Curley. I went to a few of his concerts including one of his organ "battles" at the Albert Hall. I forget who the other organists were but suffice it to say that CC's massive Allen electronic instrument seemed like a worthy rival for the Albert Hall's instrument. I know that the Albert Hall organ was then in great need of a major overhaul but I don't think that restricted its tonal range.

Also in pipe territory I heard Saint-Saens 3rd symphony recently at the Royal Festival Hall. That organ is very good but possibly a bit "polite". The big organ entries were impressive but not in the same league as when I heard the same work at the Albert Hall in the 2021 (or was it 2022) Proms. That knocked you back in your seat.

[PerdioPal]

I had the great pleasure of hearing my dad play Ely cathedral organ, I think it had a 64 foot stop. He was occasional organist (and baritone in the choir) at St Marys just down the road, where I was a chorister (I sung in the cathedral once, it was put on a record). I loved the singing but they tried to make me religious so I left.

[Lucien Nunes]

Carlo Curley's original 4-manual touring digital Allen organ was commissioned in 1974 and sold in 1979. During that period it was used for his widely acclaimed performances at Alexandra Palace, which were some of the first large-scale organ recitals I went to as a child and where I discovered the immense technical effort required to reproduce the audio adequately. Amplification was by Britannia Row Productions, i.e. Pink Floyd's PA system. He subsequenly used more modern instruments and the original one unfortunately befell the fate of so many flagship electronic organs - it was gutted and modernised and the original electronics cast aside. The playing surface of the console was equipped with Artisan sound engines and installed at the East Sussex National some time around 2012.

Jeffrey mentions the Royal Festival Hall, which was the location of a different pipe vs. electronic scenario. The pipe organ at the RFH was slow off the mark, having been designed by Ralph Downes, built by Harrison & Harrison, and inaugurated in March 1954, despite the venue having opened in 1951. During the intervening period, the hall had been equipped with a Compton Electrone, one of three similar 'Special' instruments of very high specification they built in the early 1950s. This was based on a new type of 6-rank generator designed in 1950 with (IIRC) 30 waveforms, an elaboration of their well established 4-rank unit that had been in production for three years. The RFH Electrone was apparently dismantled by Compton once redundant, although the console probably re-emerged somewhere else with a different identity.

The two sister instruments saw longer service but neither survives as-built today. I own one of them, which was commissioned in 1951 and installed in 1952 at Rowton Castle for the Royal Normal College for the Blind. Designed and inaugurated by (Australian-born) Dr. George Thalben-Ball, who was a trustee of the RNCB; he also performed in the opening recital at the Royal Festival Hall, designed and opened the Southampton Guildhall organ and FWIW taught my piano teacher (who was an organist). Compton updated the Rowton Castle organ in 1965 and equipped it with the latest 21-trace generators and a new stoplist, so we cannot hear what it sounded like in 1952. However, it is still a formidable piece of work in its enormous drawstop console, which houses the generators and amplifiers too. See pic. This is the one I drove back from Alicante in Spain, where it had been taken by its previous owner on his retirement.

[joebog1]

I loved the singing but they tried to make me religious so I left.

unquote

Its a real pity that most people that dont listen, think that all organ music if from some mass or other.
R&R changed that to some degree with people like Procal Harum, and Emerson Lake and Palmer ( to name a couple )
using organs, mostly of the electronic variety, but it did open up peoples view to organs.
That said, I dont think there are many pipe organs here, ( we are heathens and transportees remember ) so apart from Sydney Town Hall
I dont know of any others. There are quite a few pipe organs waiting to be "rehomed " and can be found at
https://ohta.org.au/redundant-organs/


Sydney Town Hall organ.
https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/thin...-town-hall

I now live 3000 kliks north of sydney ( by road ) so I dont go and listen anymore,
but was a great place to sit and listen when it was pouring rain, waiting for a bus.
Back then ( about 45 years ago ) you could just wander in and out of the Hall and listen to whatever was happening.
I think it was mostly practise sessions for the organists, but wonderful in any case.

Sorry for being off topic, but that little story is what got me into repairing Hammond organs.

Joe

[Hartley118]

Being an erstwhile Manchester concert goer, I have memories from the 1960s of the Free Trade Hall Compton organ.  I guess that in 1951 the choice of the Compton was in keeping with the modern ethos of the post-war reconstruction of the Hall, but it aroused surprise that the perfectionist Sir John Barbirolli had opted for an electronic rather than a pipe instrument. Post-war austerity may have had something to do with the decision too.

The very prominent wooden reflector above the stage housed the organ speakers along with the hall PA speakers, visible with an admirable design clarity as a series of round grilles in the reflector. See the attached photo of the hall interior.  It was intriguing to contemplate just what drive units were behind those grilles.  My impression was of a disappointingly dull sound, particularly when heard alongside the live Halle orchestra. Unfortunately, the Compton was also capable of punctuating Sir John Barbirolli's concerts with a variety of distracting electronic crackles and bangs, suggesting a dire need for maintenance.

The eventual solution was to replace the electronic organ with the pipe organ from the Odeon Cinema down the road. It would be interesting to know what happened to the unlamented Compton.

The Free Trade Hall, having been superseded by the Bridgewater Hall, is now a hotel (sans organ!)

Martin    

[Doodlebug]

I too am an admirer of the pipe organ....I wrote this many years ago.....

Oh, for some pipes and a chest full of wind
Oh for the pallet and spring.
Oh for the upper board, table and grid,
Oh for the wind ducts to sing.

Oh for the tracker, sticker and pin,
Oh for the bearer and slides.
Oh for some felt, many ivory crazed keys,
Oh for those solid oak sides.

Oh for the ear, lip, throat, cup and foot,
Oh for the reeds’ resonator.
Oh for those names - Kleingedacht, Trommet und Zimbel,
Oh for the Hohlflote und Oktava.

Oh, for some pipes and a chest full of wind,
Oh for the levers and square.
Oh for the sound of wood and tin flutes,
Oh for the sweet, sweetness of air.

[Lucien Nunes]

@Hartley118 your timing is impeccable. The Manchester Free Trade Hall Electrone was the third of the type-350 Specials that I mentioned in post #53, i.e. sister to Royal Festival Hall and Rowton Castle. In 1974 it was transplanted to the St. Johns Wood residence of HJ Whitfield 'Whit' Lewis, architect to the LCC Housing Section. Here it was recommissioned with the help of Leslie Bourn and Walter Fair (the original development team at Compton) with a somewhat modified console and large freestanding speaker cabinets but original generators and action. It then moved to Surrey to another private owner, who augmented it with various extras.

In around 2006, shortly before I started collecting Electrones in earnest and trying to save the important ones, he offered it for sale but found no takers for the complete instrument. Having exhausted that option, he elected to re-purpose the console for a digital instrument and gave the generators to an enthusiast, located in the north of Scotland, who still has them. Thus, the last of the Big Three to survive complete was split up; had I been one year earlier off the mark with my research, it would still be complete today. If it were not for the present owner stepping in at the last minute, this last set of type-350 generators might have been scrapped altogether. No others are known or expected to exist; (the generators in mine, the Rowton Castle job, were updated to type-365's during a major overhaul by Compton.)

Re. speakers, I am not sure whether the Goodmans Audiom 60 and 90 were available in 1952 (I think they were at least from 1953) but they would probably have been Compton's main drive units of choice; they certainly were by the mid 1950s. The 90 was the first British 18" driver, rated at 50W with a choice of 35 or 50Hz resonance, specifically marketed for cinema, organ and large PA use. Prior to those, they would probably have been BTH or Vitavox e.g. AK151s.

'A disappointingly dull sound' is characteristic of all locked-phase organs, especially when unaided by electronic reverberation and/or a moving loudspeaker system. The FTH organ was less dull than some, on account of having two sets of generators, therefore being capable of producing at least two unlocked versions of each pitch. One set (with six ranks including a breaking mixture) served the Great and Pedal, another with different complement of six ranks running at double-speed served the Choir and Swell.

[Lucien Nunes]

@Hartley118 your timing is impeccable. The Manchester Free Trade Hall Electrone was the third of the type-350 Specials that I omitted to mention in post #53, i.e. sister to Royal Festival Hall and Rowton Castle Shrewsbury. In 1974 it was transplanted to the St. Johns Wood residence of HJ Whitfield 'Whit' Lewis, architect to the LCC Housing Section. Here it was recommissioned with the help of Leslie Bourn and Walter Fair (the original development team at Compton) with a somewhat modified console and large freestanding speaker cabinets but original generators and action. It then moved to Surrey to another private owner, who augmented it with various extras.

In around 2006, shortly before I started collecting Electrones in earnest and trying to save the important ones, he offered it for sale but found no takers for the complete instrument. Having exhausted that option, he elected to re-purpose the console for a digital instrument and gave the generators to an enthusiast, located in the north of Scotland, who still has them. Thus, the last of the Big Three to survive complete was split up; had I been one year earlier off the mark with my research, it would still be complete today. If it were not for the present owner stepping in at the last minute, this last set of type-350 generators might have been scrapped altogether. No others are known or expected to exist; (the generators in mine, the Rowton Castle job, were updated to type-365's during a major overhaul by Compton.)

Re. speakers, I am not sure whether the Goodmans Audiom 60 and 90 were available in 1952 (I think they were at least from 1953) but they would probably have been Compton's main drive units of choice; they certainly were by the mid 1950s. The 90 was the first British 18" driver, rated at 50W with a choice of 35 or 50Hz resonance, specifically marketed for cinema, organ and large PA use. Prior to those, they would probably have been BTH or Vitavox e.g. AK151s.

'A disappointingly dull sound' is characteristic of all locked-phase organs, especially when unaided by reverberation and/or a rotating loudspeaker system, both of which were later used by Compton. The FTH organ was less dull than some, on account of having two sets of generators, therefore being capable of producing at least two unlocked versions of each pitch. One set (with six ranks including a breaking mixture) served the Great and Pedal, another with different complement of six ranks running at double-speed served the Choir and Swell. What was lacking from the sound of the small Electrones with 2.5" generators was the top two octaves of the human ear's bandwidth, which made them yet more dull. The 5" generators were much better in this regard and capable of covering almost the range of human hearing. Whether the speakers adequately reproduced the extremes is another matter, but the speaker cabinet pics above confirm that they put some effort into doing so.

FTH generator rack pic and one of the generator spec sheets below.

[Hartley118]

Lucien - Whether there's any element of telepathy involved, I doubt - I prefer coincidence as an explanation for the impeccable timing!

Electronic organ speakers are an intriguing topic. Having indicated that the FTH organ speakers were located in the orchestra reflector because that's where the sound seemed to originate and there were visible grilles, I'm not confident of exactly which of those speaker units served the organ and which were fed from the hall PA - or indeed whether the organ speakers were visible at all. The generator spec sheet indicates that plenty of high frequencies were originated but I wonder how much of that brilliance was heard by the audience. Your mention of different approaches to artificial reverberation and rotating speakers is interesting and indicative of unsolved problems. As a past student of acoustics, and having once upon a time tinkered with relocating one or two pipe organs, I've always been interested in the directional characteristics of musical instruments and their interaction with the hall acoustics. By way of illustration, the most expensive seats in the middle balcony of the Free Trade Hall were notorious for providing the listener with an unbalanced earful of trombones, whereas the overall experience in some stalls seats suggested a need for serious bass cut and treble boost. The audiophile's search for realism raises the question: which is the real sound that you want to hear?

A pipe organ presumably radiates more or less as many different polar diagrams as it has pipes, and airflow turbulence presumably ensures phase incoherence between the various notes. The polar diagram of a pipe organ mixture stop must be highly complex and randomly varying. I guess that providing a speaker system for an electronic organ to mimic the complex directionality of a thousand or two pipes might cost as much as the pipe organ itself! I'm way out of date on electronic organs: maybe advances have been made recently in this area of the technology.

Thanks anyway for your interesting account of the fate of the FTH Compton instrument.

Martin

[ppppenguin]

By way of illustration, the most expensive seats in the middle balcony of the Free Trade Hall were notorious for providing the listener with an unbalanced earful of trombones, whereas the overall experience in some stalls seats suggested a need for serious bass cut and treble boost. The audiophile's search for realism raises the question: which is the real sound that you want to hear?

The Barbican concert hall had some acoustic quirks until they did a major refit a few years ago. I remember sitting in the stalls and hearing the trombones behind me. What madness persuaded the designers to make the front faces of the balconies concave is beyond me. Ideal concentrating sound mirrrors. Had they never looked at the Albert Hall and its problems? They are now convex. I also remember a concert years ago with Alfred Brendel and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. The piano and orchestra each sounded OK on its own in one of the Mozart concertos but when both were playing you couldn't hear the piano properly. Brendel was obviously working hard to get the sound across but it wasn't happening. No idea what caused that problem.

As for audiophools I like to go back to Flanders and Swann in their Song of Reproduction: "But I never did care for the music much, it's the high fidelity!" I think that was 1959. Plus ca change.