Building organs
brings together many different crafts. By far the largest proportion
of work and indeed cost goes into the woodwork of the organ. If you
stop and consider the console of any organ that you are familiar
with, the over-riding material which is everywhere is wood.
The
console is a piece of furniture, as handsomely finished as anything
which would grace your dining room and you sit on a solid wooden
seat which must stand the rigours of organists - including the
heavyweights - the keys sit on a table far thicker and more rigid
than an average dining table, and this table supports anything up to
75% of the total weight of the console. Because of all these and
many other factors, we have our consoles made to our own designs by
a well established firm of organ builders. At first we looked at the
possibility of manufacturing our own consoles, but we felt that
certainly in the foreseeable future, the experience of a well
established firm would work to everybody's mutual benefit.
So the design and
quality of a Phoenix Organ's console reflects the experience and
expertise of craftsmen who have spent many years in the trade.
Senior staff at
Phoenix are electronics graduates and have considerable experience
in designing
and
implementing electronic systems using leading edge electronic and
software technologies. They have many years experience of working
with major electronic organ manufacturers. We have worked very
closely with the manufacturers of our sound generation processor
(chip) to ensure that the technology we use is up-to-date and that
we make optimum use of its capabilities. We have used modern system
development methodologies and tools in our design process. The
design of the Phoenix Organ System draws on on our considerable
knowledge, experience and skills to produce the best electronic
organ sound.
Our
circuit boards and sub-systems are manufactured using modern
techniques and with accredited quality assurance and testing at all
stages of production. This allows us to offer the end-user a product
which is inherently reliable, and which will continue to give
sterling service for many years to come.
Electronic and
computer-based technologies continue to make advances. Today the
Phoenix Organ System allows us to get much closer to the original
pipe sound than other systems. We believe that the differences in
sound between a Phoenix Organ and a real pipe instrument are so
small that there will be less tonal benefits from adopting future
technologies than there has been in the past and so a Phoenix Organ
will go out of date less quickly than other systems.
We
have also developed pipe control hardware that integrates directly
with our console control. Over 16,000 pipes can be controlled in up
to 16 separate locations. A three wire high-speed serial data link
connects the pipe chamber control system to the console. We are
therefore able to install our system as part of a hybrid
pipe-digital instrument, either during the rebuilding of an existing
pipe organ or when a new instrument is being constructed.
The Phoenix System
will however continue to evolve and we shall offer our customers the
opportunity to upgrade to newer generation systems in a cost
effective manner.
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