Covid Quarantine Organ Building Challenge - A 40 year old organ console goes digital!

A couple of years ago I got hold of an organ console for £5 from Ebay.
I had intended to convert it into a MIDI controller to run the pipe organ we are going to build.
Testing positive for Covid gave me the ideal excuse to spend a few days locked away in the workshop to make it happen!
I used the original key beds, contacts and wiring, and built a custom encoder out of a pile of shift registers.
It is now able to be used, not only to control a pipe organ, but also to play around with virtual organ software.
All music featured on this video was performed and recorded using the organ.

[@maximusironthumper]

Good work! Now the other half of the team better pull their finger out and do something too...

[@spungletrumpet]

Hmm.. I need to get all those ruddy windchests releathered too! That'll make some superbly tedious video! :D

[@LucasRichardStephens]

@@spungletrumpet Tedium, the antidote for all that ails our times. Wonderful film, excellently edited and produced, it is really is a resounding success all round.

[@peterjohncooper]

No idea what you were doing half the time but absolutely loved it. Can't wait for Project Awesome to get going again.

[@colinmccormack7033]

Fantastic job Mark. You are exceptionally talented, as a musician and a tinkerer! I'm looking forward to seeing this integrated into project awesome. Have a great day.

[@graemezimmer604]

Really great Mark! I'm impressed that you were able to scan all those keys quickly, and without glitches.

[@spungletrumpet]

It does seem incredibly reliable for what is effectively quite a simple system.

[@siliconjim2554]

Such a modest person. You’re as clever as a chap with two heads.

[@davew9615]

Mark would make an excellent Zaphod Beeblebrox.

[@davew9615]

Mark would make an excellent Zaphod Beeblebrox.

[@GrandadBaz]

Mark you are 250 million light years infront of me knowledge wise I love listening and watching your electricery wizardry but I'll be a poor man's beggar if I know what the he'll you ate saying. I still found it interesting. Just make sure that the Organ will play the Dam Busters theme when I rock up to an event with my wife who loves it. Many thanks to you and Max for completely Bamboozeling me over the years

[@The58stupot]

Good job Mark. I was eagerly awaiting some Keith Emerson stuff with the daggers and all mate 🤣

[@MrPhilbrooke]

You are a technical wizard sir , really enjoyed something that was a complete mystery and gobbledegook to me.

[@johnsavage248]

Old meets new and Jack-of-all-trades knowledge. Love it

[@desmondbroad1305]

Need to see more of you mark .I love this stuff it's totally amazing .

[@thomaslai5303]

Your knowledge on electronic, your skill set and your workshop are all very impressive! I used to retrofit an 1982 Allen digital organ under instructions from a friend, we torn out the whole electronics, and rewire the manuals into 8*8 matrix to fit a pre made midi scanner from a polish manufacturer. It is fun to do and also frustrating at times when some unknown error comes out. I really look forward to see your next upgrade turning it into 4 manuals! Thanks for sharing your projects.

[@danielwilson5102]

Amazing, can't begin to fathom how you keep track of all the wiring!

[@alexseaford4029]

Reminded me of various radiograms I took apart in my childhood. I never managed to repair anything but it was great fun.😆

[@handycrowd]

Brilliant to watch Mark, your knowledge is incredible and inspiring! 'Found' you via Max, and listening to the organ clips makes me want to say how important I think Project Awesome is. As a bloke of a certain age I grew up listening to live music in working men's clubs of various colours and of course during classic English seaside holidays. That music invariably included the big organs in Blackpool and the like. I got to thinking that my kids have never heard an organ outside of occasional visits to the church. To hear non church music on an organ is fantastic, so roll on Project Awesome, it is indeed going to live up to its name :-) Just clicking like doesn't seem to do this justice lol!

[@arnaldofettuccine5227]

Wow what a project. Very cool! 👍👍💗

[@remog38]

Thank you Mark, as others have said understood 10% but totally absorbing you are brilliant .

[@lefzer7713]

modest genius...great video!!!...where is Max???? wake him up!!!!we need videos for project awesome!!!

[@spungletrumpet]

He popped round last week to have a look at the organ. We've got lots of work to do on the Zil so there should be more videos before too long!

[@gnorrisblanker]

Mark for some reason listening to your talk about organs reminds me of the video of Richard feynman explaining how magnets work😂..still watched the entire video convincing myself I knew what you were on about lol

[@martinjustice]

Minimus Ivory Thumper. Respect Mark. Half an hour I won't get back.......And I don't need to.

[@spungletrumpet]

Thank you! :)

[@ShedTV]

A very enjoyable video. You have some extraordinary skills!

[@andyrmac7733]

A very enjoyable watch, I grew up near Clevedon! Thank-you for posting.

[@spungletrumpet]

Clevedon was where I used to work as a pipe organ builder many years ago. Percy Daniel and Co. (Long since ceased trading!) Glad you enjoyed the video!

[@GeoffreyDjango]

Basically you are an actual wizard 🧙‍♂️ wiring, coding and a musician and I’m sure other things too! Amazing

[@simonkuderovitch6090]

Brilliant video, fantastic skills, I cannot wait to see this and the ZiL working together. Recycling at its best!

[@ckieee]

great watch! nice project & perseverance (:

[@ross7968]

Absolutely, bloody fantastic!

[@erickvond6825]

Yeah mate I understand what you mean about a spot of tea. I do love a good chai or Earl Grey. Cheers!

[@geriatricyclist1950]

superb and useful. All ahead of me one day when my 50 yo analogue dies!!!

[@gsten2116]

Outstanding work. Thank you for sharing your many talents and skills. Bravo.

[@makingstuffwales]

I love it! Your technical wizardry amazes me! Great work

[@Mindsi]

Electronics guy- Mr Carlson’s lab!

[@davew9615]

Marvellous work, Mark.

[@GrahamDallas]

This was really fascinating, thanks for sharing. I wish I had your patience and perseverance on such an intricate job.

[@growingknowledge]

Hope you are all well recovered now. Good to see you posting again !

[@alanhutchins4233]

Fascinating, beautiful sound

[@aidanscapeing]

Fantastic bit of work, you are truly a talented guy, well done. Thoroughly enjoyable to watch the process.

[@kevinsimpson7114]

Absolute superb. Blew my mind with all the detail, but super impressed.👍🏻👌🏻

[@davidandrews8566]

Excellent content loved every minute

[@ThePeterfrancon]

Mark you are brilliant! Can't wait to see some progress on Project Awesome.

[@lpil]

Fab video Mark! Really interesting, and it's cool to see the entire process as well as how much work went into it

[@porterrockwell5287]

I really enjoyed the vid! Best wishes to you and your family.

[@patrickbobbett6358]

Fantastic perseverance… genuine respect!

[@Bonzomallard]

Absolutely wonderful. I’m in awe of your understanding of electronics as I, like max, am more of a hands on guy. Lots of love for this vid and lots more to look forward to hopefully 😁👏

[@ade9685]

Brilliant Mark had no idea you had your own channel. Your depth of knowledge is indeed to the fore here. Love a bit of Arduino and an emulator!

[@mopedmarathon]

As a mechanical guy all those electrobits blow my mind. I can’t even begin to imagine the knowledge you have of these machines and their workings. Great video. Really interesting even for spanner swingers like me. Cheers. Hope the family are all better soon!

[@petergilbert7106]

Its such a wonderful quirk of fate that two such adventurous souls with wildly different skills and passions combined to collaborate on Project Awesome. I spend a lot of time installing projects at art/science festivals and really hope that our paths cross one day in the future so I can congratulate you both in person. All the best, Pete

[@martinfortune9988]

Ah you’ve been given access to alien technology or magic or something . I feel I should also understand this the way I wish I could speak fluent French . I can’t . But great to watch like Jean de floret

[@reglementme6321]

It sounds even better than original

[@lefzer7713]

i wοnder what you do for a living.... i understand you can fix or build everything!!!

[@spungletrumpet]

I'm a freelance technical problem solver. So sometimes I actually get paid for doing this sort of thing! ;)

[@johntait5141]

You sir are a living genius. Really appreciate the bit of music during the vid that the Pythons also used. Hilarious. What a great glorious chunk of shown practical knowledge in the ocean that is music.

[@AndyJackson380]

That is awesome, what a project.

[@smays]

Brilliant. Just… brilliant. I know nothing about organs or electronics but it’s fascinating to watch someone who knows what he’s doing. I could watch you and Max fix a toilet.

[@markcoles8772]

Your amazingly talented

[@MapleMarmite]

I have never been able to get into electronics due to being colour blind but I find it interesting to see how it’s done. I’m really in awe of your knowledge and skills but mostly at your ability to make it captivating to watch something I wouldn’t normally seek out. Hope you and your family are over the Covid sickness and lockdown now. 👍🏻

[@simonmercer9530]

Your a smart kiddie ! Impressive skillZ bring on “Awesome” !

[@willemnviljoen]

Splendid. “Tea is essential” - words to live by. I did the same thing to an old Lowrey from the 1970s. Found in a thrift store, basically unplayable. Now a three manual console to control Hauptwerk for home practice. Unfortunately I lacked talent and skill, so my project took about a year (mostly worked on it on weekends and holidays) Absolutely awesome that you managed the whole build in 11 days. As we say here in South Africa: “Give that man a Bell’s”

[@MarktheOddJob]

I understood about 10% of this but enjoyed all of it! Nice job Mark.

[@markuschampos5750]

Good job! I'm impressed even though I didn't understand much of it but it did sound great! Greetings from Sweden👍

[@chrissmith7655]

Hi absolutely amazing skills, many thanks.

[@dr.chrismort8448]

Yep- genius at work

[@PhilEvansOnline]

Great video, thanks for sharing. 👍

[@HT-io1eg]

Magical, wonderful thing Mr Chief Polymath Wizard & Bar

[@spungletrumpet]

Ha ha. Thanks!

[@MrMannakin]

Project awesome indeed!

[@davidhaywood8029]

A very interesting & enjoyable video. Thank you! I know you've a proper non-KZbin life to lead, but do please make more electronics videos (as time permits).

[@spungletrumpet]

Thanks! I've got a few ideas for more electronic projects. I definitely need to make more time! :)

[@ASCIITerminal]

Hope you remain symptom free and the family recover quickly!

[@spungletrumpet]

Thanks Robert. I escaped largely symptom free, but the rest of the household are all fully recovered now which is great!

[@James_Bowie]

This is a fascinating project. 👍 Would you kindly place all related videos in a playlist, please, to allow sequential viewing of the episodes. Many thanks.

[@BachFlip]

Ah yes, the Johannus 220 I believe? I had one of these a few years ago - sold it on Ebay!

[@krisking07]

AWESOME!!!

[@gatti5002]

and now something completely different !

[@bigunone]

fascinating, one of mom's friends left one of those old organs from the 60s I would guess, when she moved from New Mexico to Cal. As kids we would turn it on to see what weird noises we could make, when we moved ourselves it was shuffled off to Goodwill I guess. Hoping the rest of your family is recovering from the Beer Flue

[@danthefrst]

Nice work. Great thanks. Idea for next video: half an hour of random hymns of moded organ music. Please

[@Electradaz]

Brilliant Mark excellent playing btw I was fascinated years ago I used opto couples to multiplex a plc to give more inputs wouldn't have any idea how to with Arduino one day I'm going to get into them a bit more. Perhaps you should have thanked PG tips as well😅 Daz from Aus

[@alanstanley9465]

Amazing

[@alnorman6846]

Thank you,

[@thorbjrnhellehaven5766]

I have an urge to get some kind of home organ, to do a similar project: - Connect keys, pedals, buttons, nobs etc. as input for a microcontroller, possibly arduino - MIDI output, to control external MID moduls. - keys and pedals as notes ch. 1, 2, 3 - buttons, noba, expression pedal, etc as CC or PC - make original sound benerator controlable by microcontroller and MIDI input If available - try to extract rythm/cords from built in module - rythms possibly to MIDI ch.10 - chords possibly as separate channel, or replace channel,

[@YAPprod]

You are a genius!!! But could you make a tutorial about how you built and programmed the Arduino MIDI encoder plz? Fantastic job by the way!

[@edgeeffect]

One of my outstanding jobs is to find out if an AVR has enough "oomph" to run a 4 or 5 octave keyboard.... so thanks for ticking that job off for me. At the start it's got quite an Avant Garde touch to it. .... oh it's chips and PCBs.... I was expecting "tropical fish" caps and point-to-point soldering. I'd've loved to have seen a close up of those boards at the bottom.

[@spungletrumpet]

Can send you photos of the boards if you like. In fact, I have no use for them and they will probably end up going to the tip so you are welcome to have them! As for the AVR, it's actually quite a robust system. I built a MIDI pedal board many years ago, using a 16 series PIC. A friend of mine wrote the code and it's a heavily modified version of that code which now runs on the Arduino. I did want to use a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller board for this project, but I don't really like Python and I couldn't get the MIDI libraries working with the 'C' compiler. As it is, with the Arduino Nano, I'm reading the shift registers using the hardware SPI interface, which I think is clocked at something daft like 4Mhz. So it should be more than capable of scanning several keyboards if necessary.

[@Ragnar8504]

Repairing the original electronics would have been interesting to put it mildly, perhaps a bit tedious with all those blue Philips electrolytics. Large ones are usually fine but small ones (up to about 220 µF) tend to be all over the place. I've replaced plenty of them in VCR power supplies and other bits of 80s electronics. My ex's dad built an analogue organ from a German kit in the early 80s and probably still has it but even 15 years ago it was in dire need of at the very least a good switch cleaning, at least half the keys no longer worked.

[@randomcol1378]

Excellent stuff, does it play, Child in time, cool if so

[@spungletrumpet]

It could certainly play Child in Time. Whether I am capable of playing it is a completely different story! ;)

[@willoneill8866]

What about singing it?

[@nbmrbluesky3688]

Cant believe the organ runs on dial up.

[@jorgwalther2665]

Absolutely brilliant. All of it. The idea, design, wiring, coding, playing and presenting! Though I'd be a bit concerned putting this into the Zil. Are you considering vibration-proofing this; like mounting the whole console on some dampening springs or some such? Good luck for project awesome!

[@mimibergerac7792]

I see lots of gold😂

[@owenrichardson1419]

Sounds great. Looking forward to seeing and hearing the mobile pipe organ. Get Ironthumper to get a move on. The Zil will take it, getting it started again might be an issue?

[@briancook4065]

good to see you back again Max has been very quiet

[@spungletrumpet]

Cheers! Max has been incredibly busy over the last few months. But all sorts of plans have been discussed!

[@alextrees6882]

Max has been posting content to his Patreon if you need more of a fix for £1 a month :)

[@briancook4065]

@@alextrees6882 i thought iwas a patreon

[@maximusironthumper]

Follow up video concert!?

[@spungletrumpet]

This is pretty much the first organ with a full pedalboard I've played in 2 decades. We may be a little way away from being 'concert ready'.

[@charmandrews]

I read shift registers as cash registers thinking you were going to use the switching mechanisms. Thankfully I was well wrong!

[@alexscott4428]

interesting. with arduino mega you can fit to one 61 key manual (53 Di+16AI) , the AIO you can also use as DI0, to each mega board no extra components. much easier but you will need a multichannel merger. as there will be one mega board for each 61 key manual and perhaps another one for the buttons / stops / pots.

[@simonwatson5299]

Brilliant vid. pity you didn't go all Jon Lord Deep Purple/ Keith Emerson-esque, that would have been great!

[@Thesimonwales]

I knew absolutely nothing about the world of church organs etc before your video, so I thank you for entertaining enlightenment. I'm thinking that you must have hifi equipment that has been through some tweaking too?

[@diwright]

A very interesting video sir. Thank you for posting. I wonder if it might be possible to have a chat about your project as I too have recently finished a midi conversion of an old Wyvern Salisbury 2 manual instrument of about the same vintage. I'm currently running GrandOrgue with some free sample sets through a touchscreen but I would like to understand more about how you created your sample set to match the existing stops as that's exactly what I would like to do with mine. If you are agreeable, what would be the best way to get in touch? Best Regards, David

[@OrganNLou]

THere is a well known British software called, "Hauptwerk" that I would urge you to look up, since your console will feature midi.

[@spungletrumpet]

Hi. Thanks, I'm aware of Hauptwerk, but unfortunately I don't have the hundreds of pounds necessary to use it. In this video, I was using 'Grandorgue', which is essentially the same thing but open source. I tend to favour either software I have written myself, or open source software, because it gives the maximum flexibility to get 'under the hood' and properly customise the software to do exactly what I want. Hauptwerk is certainly a good solution for people who are a little less technically minded, and with the price tag comes technical support, which I know a lot of people find useful. But for those of us who only spend £5 on an organ console, and build our own MIDI controllers out of parts from the scrap bin, it is a little out of our league! :)

[@OrganNLou]

@@spungletrumpet You no longer have to buy Hauptwerk, it is now a rental software ($25 per month).

[@freespiritnufc5661]

Midi spidi nano trano completely lost me but great vid 🙄👍

[@mikedoblo4782]

think you should try make a fusion reactor next

[@TheCLPVideos]

Nicely done! Hoew many total conversion hours did you have in the project?

[@freespiritnufc5661]

Midi spidi nano trano completely lost me I'm sure all that wiring is edible Please don't do one of these for the red button for borris, You might not be religious but you are a genius ,great vid 🙄👍

[@joebrewer1892]

Interesting video. I have just found 2 organs, both two manuals with the intention of combining them to make a 4 manual. Do you have any updates on your project? Would the arduino be powerful enough to handle the midi for 4 manuals and pedal board?

[@FCASMRASR]

been a while since u posted i got weirder than ever but your closer to death than me (ur older) what is ur latest insane but also genius project?

[@spungletrumpet]

It's been a bit of a weird year for me. Since May I've been back out working on live events again and it hasn't really stopped. I worked on festivals over the Summer, then back on the corporate shows for the Autumn. So I haven't really had time to get on with any projects. Unfortunately, the stuff I've been working on isn't the sort of stuff I'm allowed to release videos about, which is a shame. Still, I'm taking a couple of months off in the new year and should be back on the silly projects then. Though with a little more cash to fund them! :)

[@Lamster66]

damn what luck I've been after 61 note organ keyboards for my project for ages thats a good score there especially for a fiver. . Can I have the Circuit boards as I've got a project and i'm going to need additional divider chips and keying chips that the organs i stripped don't have.

[@tomcardale5596]

Has it eaten a modem?!

[@giusepperosano9924]

is it possible to have the electronics diagram with Arduino?

[@tommyknockers5492]

I'd me more impressed if you managed to knock together a liver.