Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church

Milwaukee, WI

Wicks pipe organ with MIDI

November 2001 to Nov. 2002, I was organist/choir director at Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church here in Milwaukee. A decent small Wicks organ is here enhanced with a Peterson multi-level combination action; Peterson MIDI Resource System; Allen SmartMidi II  Work done by Brook Falls Organ and Piano Co., Butler, WI, ca. 1996
 

8	Principal	encl	Pedal
8	Holz Pommer	exposed	16	Subbass	from Gedeckt
8	Gemshorn	encl-Swell -1-12 from Salicional	8	Octave	from Principal
4	Prestant	exposed	8	Gedeckt
4	Spillpfeife	exposed	4	Choral Bass
2	Flachflöte	exposed	4	Flute
III	Mixture	exposed	16	Trompette
8	Trompette	encl-Swell	8	Trompette
	Chimes		4	Trompette
8	Swell to Great		8	Great to Pedal
4	Swell to Great		8	Swell to Pedal
Swell				Chancel MIDI On
8	Gedeckt			Main MIDI off
8	Salicional			MIDI on Pedal
4	Flute	from Gedeckt		MIDI on Swell
4	Gemshorn			MIDI on Great
2-2/3	Nazard	from Gedeckt
2	Spitz Octave	from Gemshorn		12 General Pistons
1-3/5	Tierce	from Gedeckt		32 memory Peterson combination system
8	Trompette			Petersen MIDI Resource System
	Tremulant			Allen MDS-Expander II MIDI sound module
16	Swell to Swell			One stereo amplifier
8	Swell Unison Off			Two switchable stereo speaker pairs -
4	Swell to Swell			"main" in balcony and "chancel" in front

My evaluation of the setup

Certainly a cost-effective way to fill out a small organ's resources:

• Major work was installing the Petersen relay, combination system, and MIDI resource system. MIDI module easily upgraded/changed at any time, or new modules temporarily plugged in.

Allen MDS-Expander II module is definitely showing its age - believe it or not, it's still an active product at Allen, and the only apparent MIDI sound module they still make - see the Allen product website.  It's easy to stop at one product that works reasonably well, but MIDI products have come so much further since then, it's a shame things haven't been moving a bit further at "the largest church organ builder in the world" ;-) ..

• Yes, you can get some decent sounds out of it - organ sounds are good -other sounds are a mixed bag
• Up to 4 simultaneous MIDI voices.
• Biggest limitation: 12-voice limit on polyphony.  Obviously the vision of this module was pretty limited - to add one voice per manual. With a small organ like Beautiful Savior's, the need is more pronounced for, say, 2 stops to be added to 1 manual - say, a 16' manual stop and something at 8' to beef up the foundation. Add your 10-2/3' Quint to the Pedal for some majesty, and you're runnning out of notes pretty fast!

So, the system hookup map gets a little hairy...

[diagram to follow]

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