An extremely original approach to converting key events to MIDI events without any key contacts, invented by Mr. Caude Oudet. For keeping the pipe organ manuals and pedalboard intact, instead of key contacts, airpressure transducers were used, with input ports attached to air canals (French:gravures) using flexible plastic tube. A set of pressure transducers by German manufacturer Sensor Technics GmbH was used for this purpose.
The MIDI encoder electronics made by MGB included hwce plus custom-built boards replacing standard KeyMux64 boards, for allowing airpressure input instead of key contact input (bottom picture).

The credits for this original project (after Mr. Oudet's e-mail) go to:

• to Mr. Andreas Ladach at Instrumente LADACH in Germany who had this small used organ available for us
• to you (and your unlimited patience!)
• to the organ builder Giroud & successeurs in Grenoble (mainly his boss Mr. Jacques Nonnet), France, who has nicely installed the electronics and connected the mini tubes to the air canals,
• and a little to me who has discovered the possibilities of the pressure sensors produced by SensorTechnics

Recently Mr. Oudet has submitted on Crumhorn Labs' Forum an article describing this project.
The document can also be downloaded from here.

The following notes about this project were supplied by Mark Williams. We do encourage our customers to send us project descriptions for posting them here together with original photo materials. (MGB)

This is a 3-manual Hauptwerk organ designed and constructed by Mark K. Williams of Savannah, Georgia (USA) for his home. The organ utilizes a duo-core PC with 8GB RAM and WinXP64. MIDI interface hardware is from Largonet's MIDI Gadgets Boutique of Bulgaria (really nice boards). The main goal in the design and construction of the organ was to provide a replica of the 67-rank Harrison and Harrison that Williams plays at Christ Church Anglican as the parish's Organist/Choirmaster. Therefore, Mark utilized Oberwerk as the best program from which he could choose and arrange stops that best mimicked the Harrison and Harrison. Williams also chose Dr. Yves Petit-Clerc's Oberwerk (Milan Digital Audio) for the simplicity of the application's voicing controls for establishing balance within and between divisions and for its ability to employ treble ascendancy to the voicing process.

In addition, Williams copied the ergonomic design of the Harrison and Harrison console carefully--regarding bench height, height from pedals to bench, pedals to keyboards, and keyboards to the music desk. "The Harrison and Harrison console on which I play every day is the single most comfortable console on which I have played. I can play for several hours at a time with only a couple of breaks for a stretch and a walk around without any serious discomfort," says Williams. "So I took on the task of copying the ergonomics of the church console so that I could enjoy the nearly stress-free playing that I do at Christ Church as well as enjoy little to no transference difficulties when moving between the two consoles."

The secondary goal was to create an instrument that looked as good as it sounded and sounded as good as it looked. Therefore Williams employed two hi-end Sony
Surround Sound systems for a total of twelve speakers and two 16'' woofers as well as two powered Behringer monitor speakers (nice matched speakers) to round
out the sound.

The third goal was to convince his lovely wife, Tina (who is a lyric soprano and runs a large voice studio), that the instrument would fit into and look nice in the decor of their historic home in Savannah. Once Mark presented a photo of the case of the Bosch-Schnitger / Saint Nicolaas Kerk (Netherlands) organ to her, along with some CADD drawings of their living room space to show her that their grand piano and the newly proposed organ would indeed fit into one end of the room comfortably, she gave the project a green light.

Construction was begun in June of 2007 and voicing completed in March of 2008. The pipes are non-working. Mark Williams may be contacted at:

williams4950(at)bellsouth(point)net

for comments or inquiries.

A old Conn Classic model 825 organ console for MIDI entirely redesigned and rebuilt for using with Hauptwerk.
Two manuals, Pedalboard and Stops. The organ is located in Zion Lutheran Church in Spokane WA, USA.
The original project page can be found here.

An old Wyvern Two-manual organ console with pedalboard, stops and continuous controls console was converted to MIDI for controlling Hauptwerk virtual organ.
More details (including bigger photos and audiosamples) can be found on dedicated page in Crumhorn Labs' Forum.

The classical church organ of St. Lucas church in Munich, Germany was equipped with Midi system so a new
futuristic console on audience level could be operated in parallel to
the historic console at the organ.
Here is the short description of this system:

- 4 manuals
- 1 pedalboard
- 2 virtual manuals
- 72 stops
- 23 couplers/sub-couplers/super-couplers
- 2880 memory presets, organized in 5 segments (1 common segment plus 4 - player-owned segments accessible thru key) banks allowing different players to keep their own presets without interfering with other's presets
- 40 Crescendo banks, each 30-steps
- 30-steps programmable Crescendo
- 30-steps Swell
- LED numeric display for Bank:Preset
- LED numeric display for Crescendo
- LED bargraph display for Swell

We are proud to announce that probably the biggest (1500 pipes!) private organ in Europe, built in a office facility in Munich was equipped with custom system made by us. The opening took place on 21st of April 2006 (lower photo) and the concert was held twice due to great interest and limited space of 250 seats.
An unique Universal Rank Routing concept was implemented in MIDI decoders for this system allowing user-defined stops routing/processing in decoders theirselves.
Short system description follows:

- 2 manuals (one with second touch)
- 1 pedalboard
- 2 virtual manuals
- 86 stops
- 10 couplers/solo-couplers
- 2880 memory presets, organized in 5 segments (1 common segment plus 4 - player-owned segments accessible thru key)banks allowing different players to keep their own presets without interfering with other's presets
- 40 Crescendo banks, each 30-steps
- 30-steps programmable Crescendo
- 30-steps Swell
- LED numeric display for Bank:Preset
- LED numeric display for Crescendo
- LED bargraph display for Swell

An hybrid organ, built by James Whitemyer including three generations of tone-producing hardware - pipes (7 ranks & 13-note chime), analog electronic sounds, and digital synthesizers, whith mpc64xr and mpc40x MIDI encoders (top photo), scanning one of organ manuals and pedalboard.

Another black Hammond clone built by Jurgen and his cousin Holger. This time they used the synth part of Roland VK7 plus two waterfall-style keyboard from Doepfer installed their originally-built wooden console, adding an b4ce1 encoder to scan manuals. They called the instrument BeKo.

More information (in German language) can be found on Holger's site:

http://www.holgerkoch.org

They have special page on site dedicated to BeKo project:

http://www.holgerkoch.org/data/main/gear/beko.htm

Bob designed his own MIDI decoders with heavy duty drivers, using customized mdec64br microcontroller chips. These decoders were implemented for turning an pneumatic Mason & Hamlin Ampico B player piano into MIDI controllable player piano. Originally playing pieces from piano rolls, now the instrument can be played from PC under MIDI control using WindPlay software by Richard Brandle. The first picture shows the instrument prior to installation of MIDI interface. The second one shows the instrument after installation. The last picture shows the MIDI decoders themselves (one of them is also seen on second picture as green object).

More pictures of Bob's work can fbe found on his page on e-Valves site.

E-Valves site: http://members.shaw.ca/smythe/e-valves.htm
Bob's page on e-Valves: http://members.shaw.ca/smythe/hunt.htm