The Organ Forum

I'm driving to Chicago next weekend to pick up a Baldwin 645 Organ from a church that's giving it away.  They say it's in working order but they don't have any of the manuals.

 Does anyone know the basic specifications of this organ or its dimensions?  I'm going to rent a U-Haul trailer to pull behind my car and I need to make sure it will fit. 

This will be my practice organ since I don't currently have one.  I couldn't pass up a free instrument.  I played on a few Baldwins back in the late 80's early 90's.  Not the greatest organ but certainly not the worst I've played by far.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BamaOrganist

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645

I Googled "Baldwin 645 organ" and found this:  http://www.uship.com/shipment/Baldwin-Organ---Model-645/749305576/

It's a pretty large package.

David

Thanks for responding.  That is actually an ad that I placed to get bids on shipping the organ.  The dimensions are estimates based on what I could find online for similar types of organs.  So far, my google search has not turned up much.

Thanks again.

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645

The organ in the picture looks exactly like a Baldwin 640.  (I believe that the 645 was physically smaller.)

I have a brochure for the Baldwin 640 and here are the specs:

Width 65"

Overall Height 53"

Height (Without Music Desk) 49"

Depth 22 3/4"

Depth at Mid-section of Arm 38 1/4"

Weight 686 lbs. 

 

Thank you so much for responding.  Yes, the picture in the shipping ad is a Baldwin 640.  I was not able to find a picture of a 645 and I needed something to give the shipping company bidders and idea of it's size.  Thanks again, this gives me a better idea.

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645

The 645 is smaller than the 640. For one thing it's tabs instead of drawknobs, so the console is a few inches narrower. Also, the technology of the 645 is a few years newer and a little more compact (or miniaturized). And the 645 has a little bit less resources too, more unification and borrowing, fewer audio channels, I think. So the console is not as deep, possibly not as tall either.

Wish I had the service literature at hand, but it's 6 miles away in the shop. If you can't find the dimensions, PM me and I will pick up the manual when I'm going that way.

This series of Baldwin organs can sound amazingly good, almost digital quality. The keying is a well-designed computer-controled system, none of that scratchy sloppy gradual-on keying of older Baldwin organs.

The tone generation uses Top Octave Synthesis, which locks in correct tuning but can be varied up or down from A440 by adjusting a single tuning control. To get around the sterile lock-step sound typical of TOS organs, Baldwin came up with a system called "rate-scaling" that allowed them to derive 4 or 5 different tuning references from a single master oscillator. So the stops are very subtly out of tune with one another (and the celeste stops are several cents sharp, as they should be). This produces the characteristic chorus and beating among ranks that is commonly heard in a pipe organ that is not perfectly in tune, thus a more ear-pleasing sound, more of a big organ effect.

Alternating octaves of the unit principal and perhaps some other stops are channeled into different amps and speakers, for an interesting sound spread. There is a bass crossover applied to each channel that sends all the organ's lows into a common subwoofer. This is a great idea, freeing the manual channels from having to handle low frequencies, therefore the manual speakers can be quite small.

You may find the operation to be erratic, though, if the motherboards in the system have not had all their socket pins re-soldered. All the Baldwin products of that era suffer from the same trouble -- really poor soldering. You may have to do that before it will be completely reliable. Also, the CPU board may eventually have to be replaced with the upgraded CPU available through MusicElectronics in Springdale, Arkansas.

Good organ, though. A lot of organ for FREE!!

John

 

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"Please do not quote or make any commercial use of these remarks. Thank you."

John,

Bless you for giving such great informaton on this organ.  This really helps. If you happen by the shop in the next week or so, those specifications / dimensions would be very helpful.  I saw some pictures online of a Balwin 630.  This is the style console I remember playing.  Is the 645 similar in layout? 

Thanks again.  I'm excited that I will finally have a practice instrument at home. 

 Darrell

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645

Darrell,

You are most welcome. Glad to help a fellow-organist any time! If I don't forget, I'll pick up the service lit in the morning and post the info in this space tomorrow night.

The 645 is, of course, considerably newer than the 630 you played, and vastly better in many ways. Three manuals, of course, and computer-controlled keying instead of the elastomer key contacts used in the old 630 and most other older Baldwins. And the innovative "Silent Touch" lighted tab action instead of the rocker tabs and blind presets you had on the 630.

The 645 has all the deluxe features of a modern organ -- divided expression, crescendo pedal, genuine capture action with double memory, transposer that goes into all keys. The keyboards have a wonderful feel as do the pedals. You'll compare them favorably to the Allen you play at church. They are that good. An added feature on the capture action is the option to set a pedal registration into each of the manual divisionals. This lets the divisional pistons function almost like extra generals. My D422 has this as well, and I think it's a great idea, wish all organs had it.

You will love this organ, but be prepared, as I mentioned in the earlier post, to have some repairs done if it isn't fully reliable. You may also need lamps and lenses for many of the stops unless the church has been very diligent in keeping those replaced as needed. Other items that I've repaired on this model include the expression lamp shutters, replacing the CPU batteries if they won't hold a charge, and maybe other things, but I can't remember anything else right now.

Keep up the good work.

John

 

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"Please do not quote or make any commercial use of these remarks. Thank you."

OK, Darrell, here are the official dimensions from the service manual:

Width 59 3/4 inches

Depth at mid-section of arm 33 1/2 inches

Depth at base toe  28 1/4 inches

Height 48 7/8 inches

Height with music desk 60 inches

Weight 524 pounds

Hope this helps.

John

 

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"Please do not quote or make any commercial use of these remarks. Thank you."

It helps immensely.  Thank you again for all this wonderful information.  This helps me to plan for the move of the organ as well as prepare for potential issues that might pop up.  I’ll post pictures and an update on how it’s working when I get it moved.

Darrell

 

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645

I just found out this organ does not have speakers.  They were running it through a sound system.  I've found two Rodgers M-10 Speaker Cabinets on eBay that I can pick up in the same area of Illinois.  Does anyone know if these two speakers would work with the Baldwin 645?

Thanks

 Darrell

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645

Darrell, 

Yikes!  Wonder what they did with the speakers it came with? I guess if it's free you can't really complain, but I sure hate it that they were using it that way. Such a poor way to utilize an organ, for so many reasons (that have been discussed already on this forum).

 The 645, like most Baldwin's of the era, normally speaks through a quite specialized 5-channel amp and speaker setup,  with a 6th channel just for the 32' stop (optional) if it has one.

There are no amps in the console, so you can't connect un-amplifier speakers directly to it. You must have some kind of amplifiers.

The 5 channels that come out of the organ include 4 for the mid-range and treble of the 4 discrete channels (the various stops of the organ are distributed among the channels in an interesting way) plus a 5th channel which is actually a "low-pass" channel -- carries only frequencies below about 200 Hz which have been crossed over from all the manual and pedal stops (other than the 32').

So, ideally you'd want to have the original amp/speaker setup or find another one like it. The organ also sends a +5 volt turn-on signal to the amplifiers, and it all works together in a very nice fashion. It would be so much easier to set it up if the original amps and speakers could be found.

However, if that is impossible, you could play it through any type of decent audio system. You may need to have the technical manual to understand how the audio channels are hooked up, and you can get that through MusicElectronics in Springdale, Arkansas.

It's not too difficult to put some standard musical instrument cables on it with ordinary 1/4" phone plugs on the other end and run it into some kind of a mixer/amp system with decent speakers. So that would be a perfectly good solution if you want to do that. The organ's audio channels all come out of the organ on a screw terminal strip, so you'd need to solder spade lugs to the other end of the audio cables to do it right.

It all sort of depends on how technically savvy you are. What I've just described might sound like a walk in the park to you, or it might sound daunting.

I don't know that I'd bother to pick up those Rodgers cabinets. M-10's consist of 6 car-radio speakers and four cheap plastic tweeters mounted in a shallow plywood panel, and are hardly worth the gas it will take to haul them home. You can pick up some bargain-brand PA speakers that will sound better than those. (IMHO)

Let us know how it turns out.

John

 

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"Please do not quote or make any commercial use of these remarks. Thank you."

John,

Thanks for the informatoin on the M-10 speakers.  If they are that flimsy, I won't waste my time.  After I actually pick up the organ on Saturday, I'll see what's what and order the technical manual.  I'll keep looking online for a Baldwin Amp and speakers;  I've not been able to find anything yet.  If all else fails, I'll use the option you recommend with a mixer / amp and audio speakers.

I'm very technically savy, so this won't be a problem for me to set up.  Thanks again for the advice and help.

 Darrell

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645

thats very nice you got it for free. i have seen 645s go for around 6500 on ebay. a very, very good organ.

Well, I got my new baby home safe and sound.  It's in excellent physical condition and it looks great in my living room.  The church failed to tell me that they also misplaced the pedal board.  I looked through all the back rooms and storage areas, but no pedals, speakers or amp.  They bought it new and have been the only owner.  So, I have a beautiful console and bench and it was FREE.   I'm in the process of looking for the parts I need.

The good news is that all the lights are working and all of the pistons and pre-sets seem to be working. I've changed some of the general sets and the organ has kept my settings. 

I've contacted MusicElectronics in Springdale, Arkansas to order the owners and the service / technical manuals.  They have a Baldwin H5 Speaker Cabinet Amp, but it is more costly than I can afford right now - so I'm going to do an inexpensive alternative until I can afford to purchase the H5.  I'm looking at a Altec Lansing Mixer/Amplifier 1715B which has six six channels of amplification and I'll order a set speakers.

I did see a pair of Allen HC-12 speakers with crossover on ebay.  Any thoughts on these speakers?

I'll post pictures later this week.  Thanks again for all you're help John.  I'm sure I'll be putting other posts on here once I get the amp and speakers and see how well it works.

Darrell

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Darrell - aka BamaOrganist

Church organ - "Rennissance" Organ by Allen
Home Organ - Baldwin 645