Since my HW project has been playing for more than a year now it's really time I share it with all of you.
Let me start with some background.
Gethsemane Lutheran Church had purchased a new 2 manual, 10 rank, 46 stop Associated Organ Builders instrument just 4 years before I started playing for them which was a huge improvement over the old Hammond they had previously, and it was also much better than the old Baldwin at the church I left. This instrument featured an audio system that had 51 channels, each driven by a proprietary 35W amplifier located in the bottom of the console. Each note of every rank could be custom tuned, voiced and adjusted for delay but some of those changes involved soldering in new discrete electronic components. Say what you will about the limitations of analog oscillators but I assure you this instrument produced a diffuse wall of sound that was quite thrilling and it made me a believer in multi-channel audio. It's not that the stops were particularly beautiful because many (all?) of them were not, it was the fact that you could not pick out a specific location for the sound - it was more like omnipresent and powerful.
As time passed the organ speakers deteriorated and something needed to be done. Money was tight and few people outside of some choir members and myself were interested in a new organ. I was not in favor of fixing the existing organ because even if it were put back into original condition it still would have all the tonal limitations imposed by extensive unification and analog oscillators.
Sadly, around 2006, one of the choir members died at age 53 from ovarian cancer and left some money to the church. In the summer of 2009, her brother and her daughter, both of them choir members, consulted with their extended family about funneling all of the donation toward a new organ and they agreed that it should be done. It was perfect timing because I had just presented the idea of building a Hauptwerk organ to the church council which was approved and so we were able to get started.
We located a 4 manual Wicks console which was originally installed in the University Presbyterian Church, Seattle Washington, in 1952. The instrument had become quite unreliable in the later years of its life and so in 1999 the church retired it and now has a large Reuter in its place.
Dr. Nathan Stime from Deer Park, Washington removed the old Wicks and planned on having it rebuilt and installed in his church but the house where most of the pipes and all the windchests were stored burned to the ground so everything but the console and a few ranks of pipes was lost.
We purchased the console in July of 2009 and it spent the next 2 years in my garage where I stripped out all the old cotton insulated wire and schemed how I could reuse the original keyboards, drawknobs and coupler tabs. We ended up replacing all those items and having it refinished late in 2011 to match the church pews and I must say, it looks quite impressive.
Things really began to happen in 2012. The keyboards, computer and additional RAM was purchased, we met with Mike Byrd of GC Pro to discuss speakers, audio/MIDI interfaces and audio/MIDI cables and we ended up purchasing all these items through him. I set up a temporary Hauptwerk system in my house using the new keyboards and computer and began downloading demo samplesets so I could figure out which set to purchase. I ended up choosing the PAB Gravissimo sample set for this installation because of how well it fit the console, the dryness of the recordings and the stoplist. I wanted a sampleset that was more middle of the road in its sound because I didn't want to be stuck trying to play Vierne on a North German baroque instrument. I think you all understand what I'm saying.
In November the pedalboard was moved up into the church balcony where I installed the contact system and calibrated it and we decomissioned the existing organ on the Tuesday after Christmas and moved the new console into the place it had vacated. Later during that last week of December the new keyboards were attached to the modified keycheeks and installed in the console shell.
In 2013 the rate at which tasks were completed accelerated at a nearly exponential pace. In January the new drawknobs and coupler tabs were ordered. We had a small subset of the speakers we intended to order brought in for a trial and on the strength of the outcome we went ahead and ordered all 70 speakers.
This was particularly stressful for me because I'm no audio engineer and the success of the project was highly dependent on the speakers and we were not going to be able to return the them at this point. A couple of weeks before everything was installed and playing I was close to freaking out from the pressure of spending other peoples money and the fear of being stuck with something nobody might like.
In February, the ceiling joists above the sacristy were filled with fiberglass insulation to dampen sympathetic vibration and sheeted over with 3/4" plywood. Around this time, a separate circuit to power the organ was run around the outside of the building foundation by a journeyman electrician to a dedicated breaker panel inside the sacristy. Multiple circuits from this panel were run up through the ceiling to outlets from which the active speakers would draw power. Also, the speakers, drawknobs and coupler tabs arrived.
I then took time off from my regular job to work with a choir member in his garage for several days wiring the new drawknobs he had mounted into the stop jambs. He also mounted the new coupler tabs into the coupler board which required some retrofitting. Each of the drawknobs/coupler tabs had 5 soldered connections, 1 crimp pin connection and 2 screw type connections. We also brought the pedalboard to his garage and wired up the toestuds and expression/crescendo shoes.
I would be remiss to not mention that fellow Hauptwerkian, John Kinkennon, provided indispensable help with the expression/crescendo shoes. He lives not far from me and I visited him at his home, played his 3 manual Hauptwerk installation and looked at the system he came up with to midify his expression/crescendo shoes. After that, he took me over to Ace Hardware and scurried all around the store picking out the items I would need to do the same and I so appreciate what he did. Thanks again, John.
All of the wiring except the 12V power inside the console was finished on the last Wednesday of Lent and everything was moved to the church in anticipation of one marathon session to do the final assembly and be ready to surprise the congregation on Palm Sunday.
On Saturday night myself and two choir members started a marathon session to put everything together. The two choir members started hauling speakers up a ladder and arranging them on top of the sacristy. I buried my face deep into the console so I could run all the 12V wiring and auto-detect all the physical controls. After completing these tasks it was time to move the computer and Midi Interface out of the console and into the equipment rack, pull the 60' MIDI cables through a conduit and configure the audio system. At 3AM Palm Sunday morning we had to admit defeat because one of the Motu 24io units had died.
A new 24io was procured under warranty and so the Wednesday evening of Holy Week we got to work configuring the audio system. Finally, around midnight, I sat at the console and for the first time was able to play the organ through the complete audio system. A bottle of champagne appeared and between the three of us it magically disappeared. I don't know how any of that happened......that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Over the next couple of days, any doubts about speaker choices rapidly disappeared because this instrument can really pump out large amounts of sound. I had only a few hours with the instrument before Easter to practice and so there wasn't time to voice it properly, but even so, it was a dramatic improvement over the previous instrument.
From the beginning it was intended that This instrument be headless, so the computer and MIDI/audio interfaces are installed in a 19" equipment rack which was rescued from a government junk pile. You have to love "Good Old Uncle Sam" for throwing away a perfectly usable item so he can spend even more tax revenue. I must say the USA tax payers loss was our gain.
As things stand now, we are using only the original 92 stops with super octave extensions, celeste ranks sub extensions with all loops loaded in 24bit, and it all fits in around 20 GB, working nicely within the OSX 10.6.8 imposed RAM limits for applications.
I'm still working, albeit slowly, on the voicing and pretty much anything glaringly wrong to my ear has been addressed. It's a little tough to have to get off the bench and walk into the sacristy for every little change you want to make but we will likely fix that with a remote display solution at some time. I have not installed any of the labels for the divisions, toestuds, etc. I'm just so glad to have it playing and sounding so glorius that these things seem superfluous, but I promise they will be fixed.
Technical Details:
-Hauptwerk Advanced V4.0
-2008 Mac Pro, 32G of 800MHz RAM, OSX 10.6.8, 24" LCD monitor, Logitec wireless keyboard and mouse
-Motu Express128 Midi to USB interface
-Motu 24io Audio Interface with 2 expanders (72 channels)
-56 Behringer 2031A Monitors
-14 MAudio SBX10 Subwoofers
-1 Midiboutique HWCE Encoder
-5 Midiboutique mdec64dd-p Decoders
-UPS supplying the Mac and Audio Interface
-220VAC 80A dedicated electrical circuit for the instrument
-4 Fatar TP60L keyboards from Classic MIDI Works
-110 Syndyne SDK Drawknobs
-26 Peterson PowerTab tilting coupler switches
-12V 85 Amp RV Inverter for SAM coil power
-21 toestuds (the originals with exteriors polished and switch contacts cleaned)
-Peterson Model PKC-32 Pedal Contact System
For additional information and a few pictures regarding this installation please follow the link:
http://www.inspiredacoustics.com/en/ins ... and-oregon
Let me start with some background.
Gethsemane Lutheran Church had purchased a new 2 manual, 10 rank, 46 stop Associated Organ Builders instrument just 4 years before I started playing for them which was a huge improvement over the old Hammond they had previously, and it was also much better than the old Baldwin at the church I left. This instrument featured an audio system that had 51 channels, each driven by a proprietary 35W amplifier located in the bottom of the console. Each note of every rank could be custom tuned, voiced and adjusted for delay but some of those changes involved soldering in new discrete electronic components. Say what you will about the limitations of analog oscillators but I assure you this instrument produced a diffuse wall of sound that was quite thrilling and it made me a believer in multi-channel audio. It's not that the stops were particularly beautiful because many (all?) of them were not, it was the fact that you could not pick out a specific location for the sound - it was more like omnipresent and powerful.
As time passed the organ speakers deteriorated and something needed to be done. Money was tight and few people outside of some choir members and myself were interested in a new organ. I was not in favor of fixing the existing organ because even if it were put back into original condition it still would have all the tonal limitations imposed by extensive unification and analog oscillators.
Sadly, around 2006, one of the choir members died at age 53 from ovarian cancer and left some money to the church. In the summer of 2009, her brother and her daughter, both of them choir members, consulted with their extended family about funneling all of the donation toward a new organ and they agreed that it should be done. It was perfect timing because I had just presented the idea of building a Hauptwerk organ to the church council which was approved and so we were able to get started.
We located a 4 manual Wicks console which was originally installed in the University Presbyterian Church, Seattle Washington, in 1952. The instrument had become quite unreliable in the later years of its life and so in 1999 the church retired it and now has a large Reuter in its place.
Dr. Nathan Stime from Deer Park, Washington removed the old Wicks and planned on having it rebuilt and installed in his church but the house where most of the pipes and all the windchests were stored burned to the ground so everything but the console and a few ranks of pipes was lost.
We purchased the console in July of 2009 and it spent the next 2 years in my garage where I stripped out all the old cotton insulated wire and schemed how I could reuse the original keyboards, drawknobs and coupler tabs. We ended up replacing all those items and having it refinished late in 2011 to match the church pews and I must say, it looks quite impressive.
Things really began to happen in 2012. The keyboards, computer and additional RAM was purchased, we met with Mike Byrd of GC Pro to discuss speakers, audio/MIDI interfaces and audio/MIDI cables and we ended up purchasing all these items through him. I set up a temporary Hauptwerk system in my house using the new keyboards and computer and began downloading demo samplesets so I could figure out which set to purchase. I ended up choosing the PAB Gravissimo sample set for this installation because of how well it fit the console, the dryness of the recordings and the stoplist. I wanted a sampleset that was more middle of the road in its sound because I didn't want to be stuck trying to play Vierne on a North German baroque instrument. I think you all understand what I'm saying.
In November the pedalboard was moved up into the church balcony where I installed the contact system and calibrated it and we decomissioned the existing organ on the Tuesday after Christmas and moved the new console into the place it had vacated. Later during that last week of December the new keyboards were attached to the modified keycheeks and installed in the console shell.
In 2013 the rate at which tasks were completed accelerated at a nearly exponential pace. In January the new drawknobs and coupler tabs were ordered. We had a small subset of the speakers we intended to order brought in for a trial and on the strength of the outcome we went ahead and ordered all 70 speakers.
This was particularly stressful for me because I'm no audio engineer and the success of the project was highly dependent on the speakers and we were not going to be able to return the them at this point. A couple of weeks before everything was installed and playing I was close to freaking out from the pressure of spending other peoples money and the fear of being stuck with something nobody might like.
In February, the ceiling joists above the sacristy were filled with fiberglass insulation to dampen sympathetic vibration and sheeted over with 3/4" plywood. Around this time, a separate circuit to power the organ was run around the outside of the building foundation by a journeyman electrician to a dedicated breaker panel inside the sacristy. Multiple circuits from this panel were run up through the ceiling to outlets from which the active speakers would draw power. Also, the speakers, drawknobs and coupler tabs arrived.
I then took time off from my regular job to work with a choir member in his garage for several days wiring the new drawknobs he had mounted into the stop jambs. He also mounted the new coupler tabs into the coupler board which required some retrofitting. Each of the drawknobs/coupler tabs had 5 soldered connections, 1 crimp pin connection and 2 screw type connections. We also brought the pedalboard to his garage and wired up the toestuds and expression/crescendo shoes.
I would be remiss to not mention that fellow Hauptwerkian, John Kinkennon, provided indispensable help with the expression/crescendo shoes. He lives not far from me and I visited him at his home, played his 3 manual Hauptwerk installation and looked at the system he came up with to midify his expression/crescendo shoes. After that, he took me over to Ace Hardware and scurried all around the store picking out the items I would need to do the same and I so appreciate what he did. Thanks again, John.
All of the wiring except the 12V power inside the console was finished on the last Wednesday of Lent and everything was moved to the church in anticipation of one marathon session to do the final assembly and be ready to surprise the congregation on Palm Sunday.
On Saturday night myself and two choir members started a marathon session to put everything together. The two choir members started hauling speakers up a ladder and arranging them on top of the sacristy. I buried my face deep into the console so I could run all the 12V wiring and auto-detect all the physical controls. After completing these tasks it was time to move the computer and Midi Interface out of the console and into the equipment rack, pull the 60' MIDI cables through a conduit and configure the audio system. At 3AM Palm Sunday morning we had to admit defeat because one of the Motu 24io units had died.
A new 24io was procured under warranty and so the Wednesday evening of Holy Week we got to work configuring the audio system. Finally, around midnight, I sat at the console and for the first time was able to play the organ through the complete audio system. A bottle of champagne appeared and between the three of us it magically disappeared. I don't know how any of that happened......that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Over the next couple of days, any doubts about speaker choices rapidly disappeared because this instrument can really pump out large amounts of sound. I had only a few hours with the instrument before Easter to practice and so there wasn't time to voice it properly, but even so, it was a dramatic improvement over the previous instrument.
From the beginning it was intended that This instrument be headless, so the computer and MIDI/audio interfaces are installed in a 19" equipment rack which was rescued from a government junk pile. You have to love "Good Old Uncle Sam" for throwing away a perfectly usable item so he can spend even more tax revenue. I must say the USA tax payers loss was our gain.
As things stand now, we are using only the original 92 stops with super octave extensions, celeste ranks sub extensions with all loops loaded in 24bit, and it all fits in around 20 GB, working nicely within the OSX 10.6.8 imposed RAM limits for applications.
I'm still working, albeit slowly, on the voicing and pretty much anything glaringly wrong to my ear has been addressed. It's a little tough to have to get off the bench and walk into the sacristy for every little change you want to make but we will likely fix that with a remote display solution at some time. I have not installed any of the labels for the divisions, toestuds, etc. I'm just so glad to have it playing and sounding so glorius that these things seem superfluous, but I promise they will be fixed.
Technical Details:
-Hauptwerk Advanced V4.0
-2008 Mac Pro, 32G of 800MHz RAM, OSX 10.6.8, 24" LCD monitor, Logitec wireless keyboard and mouse
-Motu Express128 Midi to USB interface
-Motu 24io Audio Interface with 2 expanders (72 channels)
-56 Behringer 2031A Monitors
-14 MAudio SBX10 Subwoofers
-1 Midiboutique HWCE Encoder
-5 Midiboutique mdec64dd-p Decoders
-UPS supplying the Mac and Audio Interface
-220VAC 80A dedicated electrical circuit for the instrument
-4 Fatar TP60L keyboards from Classic MIDI Works
-110 Syndyne SDK Drawknobs
-26 Peterson PowerTab tilting coupler switches
-12V 85 Amp RV Inverter for SAM coil power
-21 toestuds (the originals with exteriors polished and switch contacts cleaned)
-Peterson Model PKC-32 Pedal Contact System
For additional information and a few pictures regarding this installation please follow the link:
http://www.inspiredacoustics.com/en/ins ... and-oregon
Brooke Benfield
Organist, Gethsemane Lutheran Church
Portland OR
Organist, Gethsemane Lutheran Church
Portland OR