Best Mics for Pipe Organ

[bigdaddyrox4574]

close...

I had to register just to respond to this...

That, or at least deafen it!

Speaking of pipe organs, I got to hear the Wanamaker Grand Court organ at Lord & Taylor's in Philadelphia...holy crap that thing's loud! It has over 28,000 pipes and runs from floor to ceiling of the 10 story atrium. We were sitting by the console, which was on the 7th floor. The compartment housing the circuit boards to control the beast was the size of an average bedroom.

I saw one of the most amazing displays of musicianship I've ever seen before. The organ has 5 manuals (keyboards) and two full rows of pedals and the guy was hopping back and forth between them like the keys were burning his fingers! This guy made all the discussion of a few miliseconds latency difference between WDM and AISO drivers seem worthless...between the delay for the organ to actuate the pipes and the delay of the sound to reach our location, the man was playing a full 2 seconds ahead of what he was actually hearing, and played damn near flawlessly!

And talk about loud! They said that only about 2/3 of the organ was functioning at the time we were there, and it was still shaking the walls and floors.

I am a huge fan of the Wanamaker Organ and agree with almost everything you said, but...

It has SIX manuals and only one row of pedals; what you probably saw above the pedalboard were the expression pedals that control the swell shades which are like venetian blinds that open and close to control sound output into the room... this instrument, I believe, has more of them than any other and they do indeed look like a second set of pedals.

...Ok, ok, they are pedals, but not in the same sense as the others that are for making the actual notes for which seperate parts and/or solos are often written. THESE pedals can be and ofter are substituted and or doubled with controls like sliders, or knobs near the manuals.

Also, I believe the Grand Court itself is seven floors high, but the console is on the second or third.

An additional note on the musicianship you witnessed, Peter Richard Conte (whom I am guessing you saw and heard) is not only great, he is only the most recent of the phenominal musicians whom Wanamakers has employed... check this link; http://www.wanamakerorgan.com/

By the way, did we ever decide the best way to record one before all of the silliness started? I plan to visit Wanamakers (It's a Macy's now) next year and my point for finding this thread on google was to decide the best way... I was planning on either Blumlein with two Cad M179s or Decca Tree by switching them to omni, etc, and adding a third...any input?

 

[mshilarious]

True pressure omnis are preferred for organ; with your M179s though I would certainly start with spaced omnis in Decca.

 

[bigdaddyrox4574]

OK, but...

True pressure omnis are preferred for organ; with your M179s though I would certainly start with spaced omnis in Decca.

At the moment, the two M179s are all I have (I hope to get the third by the time we make the trip...); if I run into money before then (Megamillions? Publish my book?), can you clarify what a "true pressure omni is? What is a good one (preferably in the 200 dollar range (I know...I'm dreaming.).

 

[mshilarious]

Microphone capsules are either pressure or pressure gradient, or a mix. Pressure measures, well, pressure, and pressure gradient measures the difference between the pressure at the front and back of the diaphragm. Pure pressure is omni, and pure pressure gradient is figure-8.

Cardioid is a mix of the two, and most multipattern mics have two back-to-back cardioid capsules. You create the omni pattern by mixing the two together; you create figure-8 by inverting the polarity of one and mixing them together.

Harvey probably has a better explanation in the stickies above . . .