MOTM

Hi all--

--Crow wrote--

> Gary
> Leuenberger once told me that at the US introduction of the GX1 in San
> Francisco in 1974, the concert crowd was rather neatly divided into those
> who were 'offended' at the un-organlike nature of the machine, while the
> other half were awed.
>

Very interesting. A friend of mine heard it in 1975 at the Oakland Paramount, being played by John Seng (who, I think had something to do with some aspects of the design), and reported precisely the same reaction.

It was being played in that instance for one of the concerts of the American Theatre Organ Society convention, and of course there were quite a lot of traditional theatre organ folk there (that is theatre *pipe* organ). About half booed and left the concert, the other half remained (my friend included) and were able to move in closer in view of the recently vacated seats!

Apparently Seng had quite a bit of amplification, and it was all parked on the orchestra lift. As he came up on the lift playing, it got louder and louder and louder, with a rather shocking further increase when the speaker system cleared the pit rail!

I'd love to have been there...

Frank Vanaman

I think we're talking about the same event. I had the year incorrect in
my notes.

I few years ago I tried to track down John Seng for a discussion /
interview about the GX1, but alas I found his obituary. I did learn from
Gary that John created the 'preset voices' for the GX1. That is, the tone
modules that have fixed resistors in them as opposed to the little
trimmers. He would set up a voice on the programming box, then the
engineer would record the resistance values of each trimmer to fashion the
fixed divider settings for the preset modules. Gary later did the same
thing for the CS-80 presets.

The 'amplication' was doubtless a pair of TX-III tone cabinets, made for
the GX1.

Crow
/**/

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005, wrote:

> Very interesting. A friend of mine heard it in 1975 at the Oakland
> Paramount, being played by John Seng (who, I think had something to do
> with some aspects of the design), and reported precisely the same
> reaction.
>
> Apparently Seng had quite a bit of amplification, and it was all parked
> on the orchestra lift. As he came up on the lift playing, it got louder
> and louder and louder, with a rather shocking further increase when the
> speaker system cleared the pit rail!
>
> I'd love to have been there...
>
> Frank Vanaman