Frankenstein Simulacrum! Who ya gonna call? MJO!
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 9,951
    Doug Marshall is as fine an organist as I have heard anywhere. But I tend to have questions about the M&O instruments.

    How long will the circuitry last? Can it be rebuilt in 70 years like a pipe organ.

    How is $300,000 and up cheap? I think the Organ Clearinghouse could easily provide you with an orphan instrument for that kind of money.

    Given surges and line events that can happen with electronics, even the best protected components still get fried from time to time. Those big circuit boards are anything but cheap to replace.

    No tracker action? Well, at least that's one good thing about M&O instruments. ROFL as Jackson swoons in disbelief.

    What about software changes over time? Software and control systems have a way of becoming obsolete after a time. One organ in my town was reworked with a combination action that operates on Windows 95. It is now unreliable. Yesterday's state-of-the-art is todays outdated junk.

  • francisfrancis
    Posts: 8,170
    It is an EXPENSIVE simulacrum. Bet it will be gone in 10 to 20 years.
    Thanked by 1melofluent
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Aw, francis, you're a premier organ and tech geek! You have to have more of an opinion than that. What about these gentlemen's claim that their premise is not to replicate genuine analog, live and wind driven sound, but to refine towards perfection the delivery of electrically generated sound? At least their rationale is different, if not as Cdubya mentioned, prohibitively expensive.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,090
    FACT:we just installed a BRAND NEW all pipe organ for less than 300k.
    The organ is two manuals, reeds, mutations, strings, wide and rich diapasons, beautiful mixtures, and powerful pedal reeds. -by the Ross King company.
    I hope the digital nonorgan companies KEEP raising their prices.People will have another look at the real thing and toss the imitation.
  • ghmus7
    Posts: 1,090
    18 ranks i should add.
  • I had thought that I would not comment at all, but I will reinforce what pelucid observations that Dr Hamilton has put forth -

    Too, I will second Greg's plug for Ross King, organbuilder. Having played a recital on this organ (at Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas-Irving) I have no qualms in asserting that it is one of the very finest organs of its size that I have ever played. It is an absolute delight in its voicing and versatility. I played a quite varied programme of works from Couperin to Durufle-Tournemire on it. Of simulacra I have no more to add than that no matter their size, their cost, or in what surprisingly uppity places you may find them, they remain simulacra - fakes. Fakes, like prostitutes (so I'm told), can be cheap or expensive, but, regardless their price, or adornment, or where one finds them, they remain what they are. The immutable laws of physics governing sound and its source and its means of production cannot be altered, equalled, or bettered.

    So, in answer to Charles' query, whom will I call, it occurs to me that perhaps this would be a prime case for the 'little men in white suits'.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    They're coming to take me away, ha ha!
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,573
    New York City’s Trinity Wall Street, where the company replaced the pipe organ destroyed during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was their first creation — their Opus 1.

    The church says the pipe organ was "damaged"
    while the Boston Globe article says "destroyed".

    Regardless, the M&O Opus 1 was installed
    A copy of one of the missing videos
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,573
    So how does M&O compare to a Hauptwerk rig ?
  • M&O is built to be voiced to a room. Hauptwerk is built to produce the sound of an organ in the room it was originally installed in. It is true that HW is voiceable, but there is a letter on the HW site that states that that version, the DRY version is not recommended and they will even discount the WET (more expensive) version if the buy the DR and discover it will n to work.

    There is a difference between sampling and organ and recalling it as it and sampling an organ and changing the way that it sounds.

    This is why HW is always less expensive than a dedicated sampled digital organ. And also why M&O is more expensive than the average digital organ.

    I need to add a disclaimer. M&O themselves are personal friends. I am working for a Steinway dealer establishing a Roland & Rodgers church organ dealership, a field I have worked in since 1977...including stints as part of Tellers Pipe Organs and Möller Pipe Organs. That's all. Oh, and I designed an organ that turned out to be practiced on at his home church by Cameron Carpenter when he was 15, which has turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
    Thanked by 1eft94530