Viscount Theater Organ....

[Nullifier]

Never heard of one here. Are they a European thing?? I read today that some organist was playing a concert on one but didn't catch where it was.

Viscount?? I tried to buy a new Viscount once years ago. It sounded good but had a little squeal in the audio and I told the salesman to have the noise fixed and they could deliver it to my house. I made two more visits to the showroom and the noise hadn't been fixed so they didn't deliver it after all!!

[andyg]

Viscount made just the one theatre organ, the Empire, a recreation of something small, like a model D Wurlitzer. Quite sweet sounding.

I rather liked it, having played it a few times when it was launched. We saw a few in the UK, not sure if any escaped across the pond.

[madorganplayer]

I did see an advert for the Viscount Empire on the back of a American theatre organ Society journal so they were taken to the States.

[sadatoni]

The few I've seen on youtube sounded like they weren't voiced properly.

[Nullifier]

I found some recordings on youtube and it DID sound sweet! What is the CM-100 organ expander that was mentioned on one of the other Viscount recordings?

[arie v]

Hi,

I will try to fill in the above messages.

The Viscount Empire, was an effort by Viscount to build a theatre organ in the mid 90s. While the casework was attractive enough, the technology and sounds in it were bargain basement. One could say it was not the greatest sounding theatre organ. Very few of these came into the US, and some of them were modified by Bob walker of Walker Technical with better sounding samples. Even so, they could not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Model was discontinued around 1998.

The CM-100 is a pipe organ style stop box, which is MIDI controlled. Essentially it is an expander of 12 stops and is fully configurable. The total on-board library has 180 sounds, but only 12 can be set up on the tabs. Very useful in augmenting a small pipe organ, or adding say a echo division or 32' stops on an electronic organ. The tone production is via physical modelling a form of sound synthesis.

AV

[Nullifier]

I'd like to learn more about expander boards, haufwerk and such. Is there a forum here for that?

[Kurzweil]

For Hauptwerk try http://forum.hauptwerk.com/. I think that this site has a section for computer-based organs. Go out to the general forum section headings to look. OK, I was wrong about that so you'll have to discuss it here for theater and the classical electronic organs, if you're interested in classical Hauptwerk instruments. I do the same thing. I favor Roland's Atelier and this is the best site I've found thus far for discussing it (generally under HOME ORGANS).

For theater, there is also Jim Henry's MidiTzer (http://virtualorgan.com/) which is quick to install, free, and easy to configure. On the other hand, it uses synthesized, rather than sampled, pipe sounds - - that's why it's small. You will definitely hear the difference.

[KRG]

I bought a used Viscount Empire Theatre Organ about four months ago and love it. Lovely to look at and even better to play. It is in effect two ten rank Wurlitzers plus seven percussion voices and traps. You can select either Wurlitzer by the press of one button. My understanding is that one set of voices was recorded from the organ in the home of Len Rawle while the others are taken from other Wurlies. The recordings were made in situ rather than in a chamber. The quality of construction is superb and the sound excellent. The organs are still available new and at a fraction of the price of an Allen.

[andyg]

The organs are still available new and at a fraction of the price of an Allen.

As far as I'm aware from details given to me by Viscount UK at the time, they discontinued it many years ago. Either it's risen from the grave or there's some 'new old stock' left.