Rick’s Miditzer

greenfox · Post by **greenfox** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 4:47 am

Midibox midification of Yamaha E5AR.

Today my system achieved the status of being able to be played 2x 61 note keyboards and 25 note pedals.
I have used Midibox. There is 1x Core board with 4x DIN boards for the 2x keyboards (leaving 6x spare contacts), and 1x Core with 1x DIN for the pedals (leaving 7x spare contacts + I have an extra DIN board which I will use for pistons). The 2x Core boards are connected using the Midibox Merger function. Midi Out of Core1 to Midi In of Core2, then Midi Out of Core2 to my single Midi to USB adapter. (I can also connect a 3rd keyboard (Casio) to the Midi In of Core1)

There is a bit of work to do yet to tidy up the PCB's at the pedals. Then there is pistons to set up plus swell & crescendo. It will be an evolving project for a while yet.greenfox38886.8428587963

Post by **engrssc** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 5:40 am

Hi Rick,
You deserve some congratulations and several atta boys. Have been following your progress here. And thanks, too, for sharing your day by day work. Anxious to see your pix when you figure that out also. I believe others have had a problem publishing pictures here and can share their corrective action for you and the rest of us.
Regards, Ed

Post by **Russ** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 10:27 am

Nice job Rick. For a non theatre organ that is a nice console.

If you get a touch screen monitor you could put a third manual in instead of the stop switches.

This is a replacement for a previous messege that is now redundant.

I think that we need to delete un-needed posts, but how?
Russ38886.977025463

greenfox · Post by **greenfox** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 5:59 pm

Thanks Ed

greenfox · Post by **greenfox** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 6:02 pm

Thanks Russ
That is the icon I have used, it starts to upload but only gets to about 5% on the bar before it jumps back to the post edit page. The images are only 40 to 50k and are .jpg.
Any other tips will be appreciated.

Post by **Joe** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 6:49 pm

greenfox wrote:I don't know why I can't get the pictures to show?

Rename your photos, removing any spaces and upload again. Also you may need to resize your images.

greenfox · Post by **greenfox** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 7:15 pm

Thanks Joe
Renaming the files fixed it. I had "%" at the end of the file name which it must not have liked. There were no spaces.

Post by **engrssc** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 8:03 pm

Hi Rick,
Good job on the pictures. I was curious to see what was needed to do it.
Testing - Pix of my Rodgers 340 before adding extra thumb pistons to control MidiTzer.

Just checking the mechanics of uploading pix.
Regards, Ed

greenfox · Post by **greenfox** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 9:50 pm

Hi Ed,
That is a stunning machine. Am I correct in thinking it has factory Midi, and so as you mention, all you need to add is extra pistons?
How do you propose to do it?
An easy way would be to use the X-Keys units that Russ has used on his setup. http://www.virtualorgan.com/forum/forum ... TID=416&am p;PN=1&TPN=1 These connect either as a pigtail from you keyboard connector or by USB. http://www.xkeys.com/xkeys/xkstick.php? ... 676e20ae55 788c6af108bc6229c8eb7
Another way would be a small Midibox setup, however this would be a fair bit of work and then there is the aspect of suitable switches and neat mounting.

Post by **engrssc** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 10:37 pm

Hi again Rick,
No, the 340 is an analog machine Rodgers built quite a while ago. The picture is an old one that I took just after I got it 3 years ago. I added midi interface boards to it (one per manual, one for the pedal board). So I can play the original Rodgers voice along with MidiTzer. Some interesting combinations. The picture shows the original "live" combination action pistons as installed by Rodgers. I moved these over to the left (under each keyboard) and added "new" (10 per manual plus the MidiTzer set, cancels, map etc) to the right of center under each manual. One of the "tricks" in playing is to remember which button does what with sometimes interesting sounds coming from the beast.
I do have a 58 key X-Keys panel (not shown) for the toy counter sounds that I also built (runs on it's own computer). Also there are a dozen or so toe pistons that do various things. I made these programmable so they can at times do combination action "work" and sometimes toy counter. Again, knowing what each does can prove interesting. (And I am a "follower" of the KISS principle).
When I get some time, I will take more pix and show some of this organ's "stuff". The sound "system" consists of 4 "large" Rodgers speaker systems (2 stacked go floor to 8' ceiling) and the 4 smaller ones for MidiTzer plus a "large" bass cabinet. I needed that for the 32' ped that is original Rodgers. Each speaker setup has it's own power amp to add to the mix.
Regards, Edengrssc38886.9903125

Rick’s Miditzer

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