Greetings fellow Audiophiles!

[Da5id4Vz]

I like the third picture that shows the garage door track running through the ranks.

Can you pull a stop to release sharks with lasers mounted on their heads? That’s not too much to ask is it?

[jleaman]

NOw i want to hear some bass. AND loww too. : O )

[chops]

Thanks for all the warm welcomes everyone!!

I'm still working on my web site every little bit I can, and have just added a bunch of pics of the organ. I hope it doesn't take too long for the pages to load up for anyone who might be using dial-up modems. I've been trying to shrink the file sizes as much as possible without destroying the detail and quality of the pictures.

Enjoy!

[EC8010]

Welcome,

a friend of mine has a pipe organ, and various other bits and pieces (grand piano, etc) in his (specially built) music room, but, wow, yours is a killer! Forget all this nasty electronic rubbish - go and listen to some real music.

(Apparently Lord Snowden reckons that, "Photography is for people who can't paint." To paraphrase Fred Wedlock, "I'm a bit like Radox, and buck up the feet.")

[chops]

Yeah, I don't think you will find too many people with a pipe organ this large in their house. Not to mention that this one is computer controlled as well. That isn't something you see every day.

[Da5id4Vz]

Please tell us more about the about the computer control.

Is it a standard format like Yamaha Disk clavier or Gulgranson? Can it accept Midi?

Did you build the interfaces yourself?

I’ve long thought that building the solenoid drivers and interfaces for a Piano would be a great project. The prospect of dropping in a CD and actually having Billy Taylor playing in my living room is enticing. I have no idea however as to how great the depth of performances available for the different formats is.

[chops]

Originally posted by Da5id4Vz
Please tell us more about the about the computer control.

Is it a standard format like Yamaha Disk clavier or Gulgranson? Can it accept Midi?

Did you build the interfaces yourself?

I’ve long thought that building the solenoid drivers and interfaces for a Piano would be a great project. The prospect of dropping in a CD and actually having Billy Taylor playing in my living room is enticing. I have no idea however as to how great the depth of performances available for the different formats is.

Just for the record, the pipe organ is actually my dad's. However, since two of my older brothers were in the military for most of the install, and one of my brothers living on his own, and with me still in school and being very interested in pipe organs, I helped him the most and know the whole thing inside and out, just like my dad does.

My father started gathering a few parts back in 1978 for this organ. At that time, I was only 3 years old. Once we moved to Florida in 1981, and I was old enough to use a few tools including the drill press and belt sander, we started on our 18 year long project. Every day after work and almost all weekends, you would find my dad out in the garage restoring or making new parts, including building complete new chests, pallet board, and other stuff. Just like me when I would get home from school and he wasn't home yet, he would leave a list of things for me to do that were simple enough like drilling thousands apon thousands of holes for the relay chest and some minor wiring of chests and relay switches. Needles to say, I learned a lot over the years and progressing to more technical chores.

The original plans for the organ was a small 7 or 8 ranks, but since he was working for a pipe organ company here in town, he was constantly bringing home "new" used parts and pieces that churches were going to just throw away. He even got whole ranks of pipes and chests for free! My mom thought he was nuts, but oh well.

Now my parents live up north since that company down here went out of business 4 years ago. He's still working on organs at the ripe ol' age of 63 and loving it. My mom still thinks he's nuts.

The computer is an old 386DX, 40MHz with one 512MB hard drive, one 3 1/2" floppy, and one 5 1/4" floppy. It runs MS-DOS 6.0 with CakeWalk and CakeWalk Live. From there, the signal is sent to a MIDI junction box with I/O ports and a THRU-PUT port. After that, there are several MIDI I/O cables that run to a Roland Sound Canvas, a Yamaha REV100 digital/midi reverb, and to the pipe organ console.

Inside the console, there are a bunch of computer ribbon cables running from pc boards mounted on the side to all the different stop tabs, registers, and mian board, then out to the relay chest out in the garage outside the organ chamber.

Yes, the whole organ is enclosed within its own room, not just in the garage. There is still enough room for the washer, dryer, and drill press, table saw, band saw, and belt sander. Not much else will fit out there though.

I put a few more pictures on my web site of the back of the console and computer. They are UNDER the first set of pictures. Go check them out!

[Da5id4Vz]

Pipe organ with a MIDI in... WOW!

A great story. Thanks for all the details.

I grew up a few miles from the old Wurlitzer factory. None of my neibors had pipe organs in there garages. I did however run into one guy who had one of each model of Moog synth that Moog had built (in yet another Buffalo suberb). The Moogs were cool, but that pipe organ is the best!

[chops]

You should see our tube radio collection sometime!!! Any time one of my brothers buys one off of eBay, they send it straight to my dad and he restores them for us. Heck, you should see my dad's collection some time! Talk about a bunch of radios!!!!

[Hans L]

Wow! Organ and midi.... boy, would I....

It reminds me a bit of my first organ teacher. He also had a real pipe organ that was placed in the living room (as opposed to electronic churchorgans, which can sound pretty decent nowadays). It wasn't as big this one though, but still about 2.5m wide, I think about 2m high and 0.8m deep excluding the clavier and pedals. But it sure didn't have midi!!! Wow again... I think I need to see a docter for my jaws. They fell right to the ground after I opened this thread

Do you play the organ as well?