Hello,

Will there be multiple tones played at one time?
If so you will need mutiple units for creating the notes.

For an amplifier you could take a look at this page, if you want to build your own:
http://sound.westhost.com/project68.htm

Bertus

 

Thanks Bertus,

Only one note will be played at a time in this case, but I am considering making a separate unit for each note anyway so each can be modified or adjusted to suit.

That amp looks fantastic. I think it's just what I'm looking for. I want to make one of these just for myself for the fun of it.

 

Look into a Diaphone to sub for your 32' open pipe. Can be made quite small and tucked away someplace in the swell box as they require no chest, only a valved high pressure wind. The best part is they can be tuned to sound like a fog horn or a soft pedal stop with after delay and chirf.

 

I know about the Diaphone. You guys really know your stuff if you've heard of those... Maybe this should be the pipe organ forum. A Diaphone really is a fog horn so to speak and they have been used for pipe organs but mostly for the replacement sound of a '32 reed or a '64 foot flue (2 octaves below the piano!) Since I already have a reed '32 what we need now is a flue which is more of a rounded wave. The reed or what a Diaphone does is make a much harder popping sound. Ha, I'm really surprised you mentioned one of those.

 

What's the chances of making the 32' reed doing double duty? I mean, if you have the length and diameter in a tube, then you'd just need a way to select the more sine tone or the reed tone, right?

Would you ever need both at once?

 

It would be nice if it were that simple. The resonators have to be very exact at their base or the oscillation of the air would be uneven. It's not like the resonator just amplifies the sound, it actually doesn't. It causes the air to vibrate as it passes an opening (mouth) at the bottom causing a disruption between the inside and outside pressure then rises to the top. As the air movement travels, the farther it has to go before hitting open air, the slower the oscillation. If anything were to disrupt the passage of the air, the whole big thing fails. So rerouting or changing the structure to accommodate different uses would disrupt the flow. The resonator also has to be air tight or total failure occurs.

The other thing is that the flue pipe is the same width from end to end. The reed pipe is conical. The bottom is about 6 inches square and the top is about 21". The reed actually starts the oscillation because of the low pressure above it, then the resonator finishes the job of lengthening the wave while the reed has to follow the upward pull. If anything were to disrupt that flow... failure; 'just a lot of air and jumbled noise.

So it gets complicated. Actually you do use both together, BTW. But under the heaviest loudest conditions and it makes a mighty glorious sound!

 

I've only worked on a very small old organ that a buddy of mine's Dad installed in the loft of their A-frame.

I never was really "into" the sounds organs made, but I was really impressed by the Wurlitzer grand theater organ that was installed in a place that was called "Roaring 20's Pizza" in Grand Rapids, Michigan back in the late 70's-early 80's. There were only a few made, and that particular organ was installed in a theater right before the stock market crash of '29, and the organ sat unused for many years. It was a real thrill to hear all the sounds that huge old organ could make, and the extra effects were quite impressive. Unfortunately, the restaurant failed.

About a decade ago, a similarly-themed restaurant opened in Ellenton, FL called "Roaring 20's Pizza and Pipes" that had either the same organ that was in Grand Rapids, or another that was trucked down from Indana (I was told when I was there that it was from the Roaring 20's in GR, but someone else reports this was from Indiana, so I don't know for sure where it came from). Unfortunately, this place also closed sometime in 2009, and I don't know what happened to the mighty Wurlitzer theater organ.

Anyway, here's a link to a YouTube video of a gent playing "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0US1Y877aec
It simply does not (nor could) do justice to the way that organ sounded when you were there in person. It made your hair stand on end and your body vibrate!

A search on YouTube for "Roaring 20s Pizza" will net a number of other videos.

 

One of my old haunts was a pizza restaurant in Portland Oregon called the Organ Grinder. It was started in 1974 and died in the late 1990's. I was in college in Portland in 1974 and used to walk about 4 miles to this place at least 3 nights a week to listen to this thing. It was one of those few ever made Wurlitzer organs you are talking about. Yeah, I know what you're talking about! As I understand, there were some rather wealthy organ collectors that had stored these monstrous things and were trying to find a way to display them. Even though the pizza parlor thing fizzled out after a couple of decades, the impression they left on many people was immense, including me.

 

cornflake000.
Back in the beginning of organ development Father Hope Jones, you have heard of him, wanted to give a small organ placed in a large cathedral a big sound, that's feel. He built wooden boxes of different sizes, sat them on a long chest and they didn't make a sound,only a powerful vibration corresponding to the note of the octave above. The 32' box was said to be about a meter square with a wind slot the width of the box and a tunable mouth above. Same effect as driving with a car window down an inch or so and the interior will buffet.

 

Same effect as driving with a car window down an inch or so and the interior will buffet.

My Explorer does this with perfection (irritant). Generating the tone is not a problem. Amplifying it to the recipient in proper proportion is. I highly doubt that the lack of a resonating chamber will deliver the quality of sound you seek. Myself, I'd be looking at the building structure to look for a such resonance. A false wall, the stage platform, the flooring subjoists, or something along those lines. An amplifier and speaker in my estimate would be sorrily inadequate. But then again, I'd be just as happy to sit back and learn from experience.

 

Thanks for your interest you guys. The organ at this Cathedral is in a spot perfectly situated for resonating sounds. You can play very tiny string sounds and they are heard everywhere with ease. You can play powerful reeds, or in our case Bombard reeds, that are excruciatingly loud when you stand next to them but simply fill the building expansively. A building can be the perfect amplifier without any electronic devices at all if the sounds produced are in the right place. I wish I could draw you a picture to illustrate; it's a very interesting art, interior acoustics. There is a huge organ built accross town by the Mormans a few years back, in their new convention center. It is one of the largest pipe organs in the world, probably the 3rd or 4th largest. It's maybe 300 ranks of pipes which is an estimated 25,000 pipes. It has some of the loudest pipes that can be produced. It has a full set of '64 pipes that is one of the few of that size in the world. It sounds TERRIBLE! They spent over 6 million dollars to build that monstrosity but because of the acoustics in the hall they could have used a 1960's bar room electric organ worth $200 and it wouldn't have been much different. Believe it or not, they have to use microphones on it, and it still can't push the building. It's a big place but the acoustics are horrendous so it's a huge fiasco. We have a 60 rank, 6000 resonator pipe organ at the Cathedral which in general terms is considered very large. Where do the Morman pipe organists do their concerts and recitals? At out Cathedral! Not the Morman tabernacle or their convention hall. The do them here, because our organ in sound is probably 4 times the weight of the convention centers instrument. Acoustics are everything.

Taking these ideas into consideration, if you are making speakers for a sound system, think acoustics in the room, acoustics inside the driver enclosure and the crossover very carefully. They make all the difference... forget the driver; get the one that is cheapest and meets your frequency and power requirements. Like the organs I mentioned, it's not the instrument (drivers) so much, it's the acoustics!

The idea above about the car window box thing... 'may work.... it's on the principal of the diaphone actually, but may have a rounder wave. ??? interesting...

 

The church with a reverb time of 6 seconds has terrible acoustics!
It will be full of a mumbo-jumbo of echoes.

You are a really funny guy that doesn't know the first thing about organ pipes and how they are tuned to fit the space acoustically. Probably you are used to your studio where there are no reverberations at all.

A reverb time of 6 seconds is quite normal for a church that size!

Enough said!

 

He probably just didn't know the difference between reverb and echo.

 

I'm fascinated about pipe organs, and it is too bad that you can't use a real rank for that. Couldn't you use a rank hidden elsewhere? Since these are very low bass sounds, I think someone hearing to it will not feel where the sound is coming from.

I only suggest this because it is not uncommon to find organs where the actual 32' ranks are hidden inside one of the towers or nested in a corner.

 

That is true. I have seen them hidden. There just isn't any horizontal space for it, even above or on the sides. I could put them in front of the rosette window but I don't think the powers that be would appreciate it The towers are not connected to the inner cathedral. I would love to make a full set if it were possible. The other issue is air pressure. One's of that size would take more air than we presently have available and to add the wind would take another $20K blower. I could make a stopped pipe. That means it has a plug in the top that causes the pipe to sound an octave lower but that is a much softer sound. What is needed is an open flue pipe. It's complicated....

 

He probably just didn't know the difference between reverb and echo.

I go to church for weddings and funerals. Most of the time there are so many echoes that take a long time to die (because the reverb time is long) that I don't know what is being said.

I found this at an AVS forum:
"Church Acoustic question

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: I was told church acoustic is either designed for voice(talks) or music.
I always thought if it's good for voice, it should be good for music and vice versa.

How true is it?
Why?

A: It has to do with the reverberation in the room. Cathedrals with organs especially tend to have long reverb times whereas speech needs short reverb times to improve the intelligibility. Here is a link complete with demo files to show the difference that reverb times make.
http://www.bkla.com/reverb.htm" (but this link doesn't work anymore)

 

But stopped pipes have disadvantages when compared to open pipes, right? They wouldn't produce a sound with that much volume, if I'm correct. But I think a rank of stopped pipes would be a solution. Or you can opt for the digital solution being discussed here. I'm a purist, what can I say?

 

I go to church for weddings and funerals. Most of the time there are so many echoes that take a long time to die (because the reverb time is long) that I don't know what is being said.

I found this at an AVS forum:
"Church Acoustic question

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: I was told church acoustic is either designed for voice(talks) or music.
I always thought if it's good for voice, it should be good for music and vice versa.

How true is it?
Why?

A: It has to do with the reverberation in the room. Cathedrals with organs especially tend to have long reverb times whereas speech needs short reverb times to improve the intelligibility. Here is a link complete with demo files to show the difference that reverb times make.
http://www.bkla.com/reverb.htm" (but this link doesn't work anymore)

I can't dispute that. The spoken voice is full of overtones and is very weak. It needs to be amplified in "most" cases in a large cathedral to overcome this. A powerfully sung voice needs no amplification in "most" cases because of it's volume and purer overtones. A cathedral in the medieval or classic sense just is what it is. It is made for music for the most part, not for the spoken voice. In modern times where the spoken voice is more prevalent, small speakers are fitted onto the backs of pews and are delayed from front to back to compensate for the movement of the sound. If the speaker is not successively delayed the sound is lost again mostly to open space. If you want a cathedral, you get music. If you want a spoken voice, go to a modern church. Personally, I am for the music anyway, I have little interest in what's being said. My job is making the cathedral sound like a cathedral and utilizing that space the way it is meant to be.

There are exceptions to this rule though. There are some cathedrals that compensate for both voice and music naturally. They are few.

Good comment!

 

I highly doubt that the lack of a resonating chamber will deliver the quality of sound you seek.

There is not too much sound from a 32' stop. Mostly feeling. Play a 16' open flute and add the "feel" of a 32'. Only the keenest ear will notice the fake 32'

 

Yup... That's why I am considering the electronic route for this effect given the lack of space for the real thing. It should be a relatively low cost experiment.