SomeChap

17 years later! Talk about reviving a zombie thread! When Pierre L made the previous post in 2007, Spotify hadn't launched in the UK, and my friends had just introduced me to a web-site called 'facebook' which they struggled to describe but said I should join because it was fun. Having said that.... I must say I agree with Nic and Vox about the MC-A vs KB Alain. I think if I'd heard KB first I'd have loved it, but those Belfort recordings are something else. Is it the sound engineering? Belfort is recorded very close but not too close and you can hear every detail, whereas the Marcussen sounds much smoother. For me, the MC-A set is almost what the Gen-Z types would call an ASMR experience! Highly recommended, I've never heard anything which sounds remotely similar. Hmmm I'd better have a think about my top five...

By the way, by 'thumbing down', I of course meant the technique of playing simultaneously on three keyboards by using the thumb on the middle one, not this 👎! Sorry I was writing very quickly in my phone keyboard. Thanks to @SlowOrg for the bbc sounds link. JS utterly brought the house down. The Ives Variations on America sounded like they were written for this player and this organ. The Tchaikovsky 1812 shook Kensington. We were also given a whistle stop tour / demo of the organ's departments and stops - excellent audience engagement: friendly and gently funny without being glib; just enough speaking to bring people in and not too much to upstage the actual music. My primary-age kids loved it. Even more unusually, my wife loved it Everybody loved it. It was one of the best Proms I've been to, never mind one of the best organ recitals. SC Ps. The organ also featured gloriously the previous evening in the Strauss Alpine Symphony, played by Richard Pearce and accompanied by the BBC Symphony Orchestra 🫡.

Quick note to say I'm at the Jonathan Scott prom right now and it is joyous and spectacular. There are thousands of people here. There is a lot of thumbing-down going on ...

Quite by chance I've just stumbled into the organ loft at Brussels Cathedral on google street view. Thought it might be of interest here - looks like the ruckpositive is just a sham facade?

A slightly more careful reading of the original poster Peter's contributions than my previous attempt suggests that what he is really looking for is two-manual instruments which have been successfully rebuilt / augmented for congregational / parish work. A firm I do know has done a great deal of 'updating' two manual parish organs in the UK is Henry Groves of Nottingham, often under the advice of Paul Hale whose article is linked above, often within tight budgets and often not fighting shy of extension. Their 'rebuilds' page is here with, lots of samples of their recent work, and two that caught my eye as being relevant to this thread might be the Quorn and Newnham rebuilds, among numerous others. A few caveats: Groves often use non-standard winding architectures, direct electric mechanism and computer controllers to save huge amounts of physical space and achieve flexible and accessible internal layouts in their rebuilds. These are innovative, but therefore inevitably have not really been through the test of time, and they may not be available in Australia (where I think Peter is based). Many of their 'rebuilds' are almost new organs but with old pipework. I've never played a Groves organ or rebuild, so I have no idea how 'good' they are (perhaps other members have direct experience?). Also I am very aware that some here consider such updating to be mutilation. Also, while I defer to our kind hosts, their recent work does not seem to be documented very extensively on this site at the moment, so I'm not yet very familiar with their contribution in this area (if anyone does have examples to share then do please step in and fill the gap, as I'm sure it would be of interest). And other excellent organ builders are of course available! With all that said, Groves's work does appear prima facie to be a constructive match with what Peter was asking to be shown, so I hope the links above help. SC ---- [tl:dr: maybe look into Henry Groves's 2-man rebuilds, but this isn't an advert!]

... oh but I was forgetting the wonderful TC Lewis organs in Studley Royal and Cullercoats, both meticulously restored by Harrisons ... ... and I presume it's no help mentioning Arnstadt, Altenburg Schlosskapelle, Innsbruck Hofkapelle, Noordbroek, Cappel, Frideriksborg ...

I've not actually played this one (it's not been installed yet!) But the Binns that Nicholsons are currently transplanting from Glasgow to Dedham is 2-man and looking very promising. https://www.nicholsonorgans.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/website-spec-dedham.pdf I do like a Binns and have good memories of them in dry acoustics (eg Christchurch Linthwaite, Nottingham Albert Hall - both bigger though). Trying to stick to organs I've actually played then .... I was really impressed with the new Flentrop in Sidney Sussex Chapel, Cambridge - now there's a dry acoustic for you and the Flentrop sounds so warm and clear in there. https://npor.org.uk/survey/K01359 In the interests of balance I should mention the other place and another excellent 2-man in a very dry acoustic is Pembroke College Oxford - https://npor.org.uk/survey/D01920 I also loved the Vincent Woodstock in Fotheringhay - https://npor.org.uk/survey/D08348 OK I'd better stop, but one last one that's probably not on peoples' radar is the very small and charming Nigel Church organ on the west gallery of St Giles' Sandiacre, only 10 stops but a gem, again in a very dry acoustic. I'm a fan of Nigel Church's work, as my previous postings will no doubt show; https://npor.org.uk/survey/N05355 - the key to success here is an enclosed Great organ and very very gentle voicing. So many to choose from! SC

Thanks, that makes a lot more sense. (I wish this forum had likes / reations, rather than having to put up a whole post just to say thank you!)

I'm a bit confused by this! I was under the impression that what everyone didn't like about the old Mander was that it was too big, and essentially muffled itself in the cramped chamber. But this new proposal is four stops bigger!

Many thanks to [I'm assuming Andrew] Caskie for those clarifications and to Rowland Wateridge for the link to the vdH site, which answers our questions:

I'd missed these posts somehow @Choir Man - they're excellent thank you! I'd completely forgotten I'd played once at Doesburg a long time ago. You can also see the little Flentrop up in the choir, which is also an excellent organ of its time. The last judgement behind the organ at St-Maximin is just sensational!

I'm no expert and haven't heard the instrument in person (one day...) but there is definitely something idiosyncratic about the action at St Eustache: just watch the first thirty seconds or so of this video and you'll see that the detached console is just a relay, pulling down the actual mechanical keys of the tribune console! If you watch the end of the video you'll see that this even extends to the mechanical octave couplers; as one wag puts it in the comments "Man, that ghost sure has a lot of fingers!". So to Keitha's point, it's not the same solution as the dual actions used at Symphony Hall / Bridgewater Hall / Manchester Cathedral et al. According to one comment I read, there's a computer in there somewhere at St Eustache, and if it's a 90s computer it will definitely be at the end of its life! Replacing it with a more conventional EP action could well be a sensible route to take. We were very wedded to mechanical action in the 90s weren't we! Side query - why do so few French cathedral organs have detached consoles? Putting one in Notre Dame would be an absolute sensation! SC

That is possibly the answer for some people! It's not just about audio though: Dr Pykett's point often stands for any software on any OS. The 'Advanced' tab always contains settings which someone on the software development team would rather you didn't play with (presumably either because they think you're not clever enough, or it's a feature dear to their heart and they can't bear the thought of you disabling it) but someone else has told them they have to expose the option to you, so they've tried to hide it somewhere obscure. Never neglect the 'Advanced' tab! Macs are definitely right for some, particularly in the sphere of media editing, though you're buying a conspicuous consumption brand and the accompanying price tag is correspondingly eye-watering. Personally I've had a bad experience with the analogue audio output on a mac I once owned (and I've no intention of buying another), but I do concede that our friends over at the Hauptwerk forum do generally seem to have a better experience with Macs than with PCs for their use case, which is not dissimilar to Dr Pykett's. If sticking to Windoze, then the suggestion to use an external sound card (usually connected via USB, though SPDIF will work in certain use cases) is an excellent one (and one that the Hauptwerkians will be able to tell you all about; my knowledge of the best models is very out-of-date, but good brands include Behringer, M-Audio, PreSonus and Focusrite among others). They will come with good drivers which bypass the nonsense that W10 (and its consumer audio device chums) applies to audio. And if you want decent audio performance with PC price tags but without the Microsoft OS then there's always Ubuntu Studio, but that's not a rabbit hole that I've personally yet screwed up the courage to go down (even though I use Linux a lot), so that's a suggestion rather than a recommendation!

Absolutely of interest, don't worry! It's a shame the Mander forum doesn't have 'thumbs up' type responses; I find them really useful on other fora as feedback so that you know whether what you're saying is of value to people. I hope and trust that our late friend would have approved of, or at least tolerated, us wondering off at a tangent on his thread ...

Absolutely of interest thank you! Though I think I'd have struggled with the Hope-Jones organ, Thank you that's a good pointer! I seem to be struggling to find a good one of the Chancel case, which is also nice, if less demonstrative than the transept case (which i assume is now empty since it was built to house the Hope-Jones Solo Organ).