Wurlitzer 260 Special Conversion
The photo shows what started off as a 3 manual, single stop rail, Wyvern console. This was one of only a couple of white finished theatre organs, made by Wyvern. It was originally powered by the Bradford System and although it may have been good in the 1970s, it was pretty ghastly. Someone had added an extra row of dummy stop tabs, which weren't especially good, even for decoration!
The organ was to be converted into a (sound) replica of a Wurlitzer 260 Special, which meant that a second rail of fully functional stops was necessary. This meant that the over all height had to be increased and because the original K/A stop actions were too tall to allow for another to be added above, it was decided to scrap the originals and install a complete new set of Syndynes.
A high gloss white finish was chosen for the main console and horseshoe and because the original woodwork had a tendency to move and crack the finish, it was stripped and filled prior to spraying. A new music desk also had to be made, because the original was of such poor quality it could not be tamed into 'taking' the finish, so was replaced by the more stable MDF! Pedal lighting is by conventional incandescent tube, but the horseshoe lighting is by blocks of (3) high brightness LEDs from Maplin, which give a good light spread and run absolutely cold.
The Bradford sound system was being replaced and because the stop action logic was an integral part, a new 'relay' also had to be fitted. The organ now uses the Artisan uMIDI system, which gives full control over the stop action as well as providing twelve levels of piston memory. Also, because there are now approximately double the number of stops, a new 15V 60A power supply was installed to cope with the increased demand for action current.
The voices are produced by the Paramount ™ 332 sample set running on the Hauptwerk ™ platform. The ranks are split into virtual chambers - Main, Solo and Percussion, each being spreaad accross the stereo channels allocated to it, along with two separate channels for the 16' and 32' stops which are setup as offset 'chests' and combined into a single mono channel to feed a single sub-woofer. All outputs are under control of the two Main and Solo expression pedals.
Amplification is by 16 Behringer TRUTH 2031A studio monitors for the Main and Solo chambers. The bass extensions are fed to a 300W Crown amplifier which powers a "Housewrecker" sub-woofer, specially built from plans by Decware Audiophile Speaker Designs. A small amount of reverb is provided by a Proel reverb unit and two sattelite speakers.