Comparing the meerkat - the digital experience!

[Southern Comfort]

SC... maybe you should grab a cheap flight over to see this organ! You would be assured of a warm welcome!
I'll stand you lunch!

I may just do that. Less than £50 from Heathrow to Cork and back on Aer Lingus.

[docmattc]

Is the meerkat a reed or flute stop? I'm guessing that its a variant of the meerflote

[Hare]

Is the meerkat a reed or flute stop? I'm guessing that its a variant of the meerflote

Pipes of curious construction - speak with a squeak from one side of the mouth

[musicus]

Pipes of curious construction - speak with a squeak from one side of the mouth

Hare, you write in dactylic hexameters! (dum dum dum diddy dum dum / dum diddy dum diddy dum diddy dum)

[Hare]

Pipes of curious construction - speak with a squeak from one side of the mouth

Hare, you write in dactylic hexameters! (dum dum dum diddy dum dum / dum diddy dum diddy dum diddy dum)

As Presbyter said............. Simples! LOL

[organist]

Copeman Hart is the Rolls Royce. Cathedral were excellent but their aftersales care was weak - they are overstretched I think. What is crucial is the number of channels to the loudspeakers! Also the acoustic if the building! Best to go around and play different instruments in situ. I still remember the superb Copeman Hart at Eltham Priory. No time for Allens - sweet talking rep put me off and the demo organ we were offered was old technology.

[keitha]

With Presbyter’s help, I have looked at, heard and played instruments by the following for extended periods: Ahlborn Galanti (x2), Allen, Makin (x2), Phoenix and Viscount.

Viscount was a late addition to the list, largely through Southern Comfort’s comments and because Northampton Cathedral now has one. I generally tried out 2 year old models, so that they were reasonably up to date and I could find out about post installation support. I took many soundings from others (in addition to those via the forum) which covered, in addition to the above, Copeman Hart and Rodgers and also looked at Marshall & Ogiltree in the USA and some of the Dutch companies that use real time sampling. In passing, I would like people to note that I received tremendous support and enthusiasm from our friends from other Christian denominations and from subscribers to this forum. I could spend the next year trying out organs throughout the country!

Until 3 weeks ago, Phoenix was the clear leader, with excellent sound production and quality custom built consoles at a very competitive price. Presbyter arranged for me to try the Viscount at Bromsgrove School (a ‘Prestige’ range model with sampled sound). I was very pleasantly surprised by the sound, but I felt that the Phoenix was better, with a console that was streets ahead of the Viscount. The next morning I had a call from Jeremy Meager, the MD of Viscount UK to ask me what I thought of the organ (the music director at Bromsgrove had told him about my visit). I said exactly what I said above and he promptly offered to install a Unicom 500 with Physis technology in our church for a couple of weeks. The technology uses real time synthesis, not sampling, and has been designed by Viscount over a 10 year period (if anyone wants to know the key differences between the two systems, please feel free to PM me!), and the organ is currently on a demonstration tour through the UK and was between ‘gigs’.

It arrived 10 days ago and left today for Harrogate Conference Centre. The sound is noticeably superior to the Phoenix, with a remarkable warmth and sweetness of tone. The console of the standard instrument is, in my view, dreadful, with lots of lights and very few items where you expect them to be. Viscount will, however, install the Physis software in a custom built console by Renatus (who build for Phoenix) with motorised drawstops etc for us (which is what Northampton has, but with the older Prestige system). I have been amazed at the effect on our parishioners – no-one has complained or criticised us, everyone has been supportive, and last night a parishioner (who none of us had ever thought had any great interest in music) told our PP to ‘just get it’! I played the Bach Passacaglia after mass last night, and at the end there was an outbreak of applause from the parish youth group, who had heard the sound from the parish meeting room and ran into the church, jumping up and down with excitement. The group leader said that it provided a real atmosphere in the church that she had only now realised was missing. A friend of mine who is ‘musical’ and had heard the Phoenix summed it up by saying that the Phoenix sounded good, but the Physis was something special.

I will now have another listen to the Phoenix before I make my final recommendation – so the saga will continue!

[promusica]

God, I'm terribly late into this discussion, although the benefits and disadvantages of digital organs over pipe instruments could be discussed for decades to come. Two years ago, after careful research (which included visiting and playing different digital organs, web-research and customer reviews, and audio samples from manufacturers), our school finally bought a two-manual Content organ, the Mondri II model with 31 stops. It also exists in a 37-stop model. They're a Dutch make, top quality casing, with plenty of extras if you wish, and each stop can be customised. We specifically asked for our Celeste to have a softer, flutey sound rather than the standard reedy sound - that was no problem, at no extra cost. It has proved a fabulous buy, very realistic reproduction. The only unfortunate thing was that there was no distributor for this in the Republic of Ireland - the only digitals available to buy in the Republic are Viscount and Allen, which we disregarded on price (of the Allens) and quality of materials used and tone (in the case of the Viscounts). There is a distributor for Content organs in Northern Ireland, and another one in Cornwall (I think), so we went with AA Music in Lisburn. We haven't looked back. And cost - every home should have one - around £5500-6000 sterling; the exchange rate at the time unfortunately didn't really work in our favour, but to all UK churches and organists considering a digital, check out the Content. Their website is www.content-orgels.nl.

[Hare]

Our Viscount has the "standard" console which would not be my first choice, but tonally it is excellent.

I hope that people will start to look at Viscount as they are now and not be influenced by what they were in the past.

[promusica]

True, the Viscounts of the past are now what they are now. Dublin Airport Church has a very nice model - a Viscount Toccata II - which had, unfortunately, a limited time on the market. When it first arrived the radio signals from the airport caused havoc with its settings, lurching the thing (and myself in the organ seat) into Reed stops for quiet solo verses of the psalm, transposing up a minor third in the middle of a verse of The Lord's My Shepherd. After extensive investigations, the solution was remarkably simple - to coat the entire inside of the console with aluminium foil. That did the trick. Apparently there was a Toccata II on some RAF base in the UK that had the same problem, with the same solution. But as an organ, it was a nifty instrument, with four voice settings for each stop, realistically voiced, and came with a reasonable price tag.

[Hare]

True, the Viscounts of the past are now what they are now. Dublin Airport Church has a very nice model - a Viscount Toccata II - which had, unfortunately, a limited time on the market. When it first arrived the radio signals from the airport caused havoc with its settings, lurching the thing (and myself in the organ seat) into Reed stops for quiet solo verses of the psalm, transposing up a minor third in the middle of a verse of The Lord's My Shepherd. After extensive investigations, the solution was remarkably simple - to coat the entire inside of the console with aluminium foil. That did the trick. Apparently there was a Toccata II on some RAF base in the UK that had the same problem, with the same solution. But as an organ, it was a nifty instrument, with four voice settings for each stop, realistically voiced, and came with a reasonable price tag.

I thought the Toccata II was a Wyvern model.......?

[promusica]

Are Viscount and Wyvern then related companies?

[Psalm Project]

No - Wyvern and Viscount are not related.
Wyvern and Content are... the MPS series of Wyvern are rebranded Content (with 'different' sampling... let you ears decide that one!!!)
to add to that... Makin, Johannus (and the recently acquired Copeman_Hart) are the one group - just google makin and peek at the youtube intros to each brand... very strange... same MD saying essentially the same stuff... make your own mind upon that one!

[jonathaneyre]

I had to chip in on this one:

Phoenix organs are very very good and not overly expensive and will build you exactly what you want! I installed one in St. Josephs RC in Sheffield and was also on the staff at Sheffield (Anglican) Cathedral just after it's installation, and I cannot fault them.

Allen and Copeman Hart are RIDICULOUSLY expensive for what they are!

Another company to look at is Hoffrichter UK, by FAR the best sound samples I have ever experienced because they run the Hauptwerk software. Because they are a small company you can contact them easy and get the advice you need. Especially if you have little or no acoustic they can provide you with 'wet samples' which have acoustic built into them. Nowhere near as expensive as your other builders and the consoles are VERY comfortable.

Well that's my 50 pence worth!
Jonathan

[Southern Comfort]

So sad that the Rolls Royce of electronic organ building (Copeman Hart) have sold out to Makin. Unless Makin perpetuate Ernest Hart's unique and brilliant technology, CH instruments henceforth will certainly be overpriced. (He was an eccentric genius.) One wonders, cynically, whether Makin are going to use the CH name and reputation to charge a lot more money for their own instruments under a different and classier name.

A new Makin recently installed in this part of the world (the PP went and bought it without consulting anyone ) is extraordinarily depressing, both to play and to listen to. I think it is easily the worst electronic organ I have encountered in the past two years.

Having played a number of Phoenix installations in recent times, I and others whose opinions I respect have not been as impressed as we expected to be, though the demo recordings sound good (we discussed why this was, much earlier in this thread). And they are considerably more expensive than other comparable makes. Not impressed with Wyverns recently tried out either.

The less said about Allen, the better. I think everyone agrees on that.

As for Viscount, the latest generation of instruments under the recent management are very good, as cited earlier in this thread, but older ones are now starting to show their age. I have encountered two 17-year-old Viscounts recently which are giving problems. It appears the company's technicians have said there is nothing further they can do with them because they were built with technology that is now two generations behind where we are now....

By the way, I am told that Hugh Banton is no longer in operation, and that the Bradford Computing Organ will henceforward be unobtainable. Does anyone know any more about this?

Thanks to Jonathan Eyre for his remarks about Hoffrichter and Hauptwerk. I have heard about these for a number of years, but have never actually encountered one. Does anyone have a list of where some examples may be found?