Mixing Organ Into the Sound System

The best approach depends on your desired outcome. If your desire is strictly for recording and live-stream then you have a lot more flexibility than if you expect to reinforce the sound as well. 

Because an organ is such a massive instrument, to try to "direct mic" each rank would be a nightmare. If your Allen organ is like ours, there are no direct outputs that mix all the ranks together. You would have to rewire the amps internally, tap off at a line level from each rank generator, and feed a separate sub mixer to get a manageable signal to the board. Do-able but very impractical.

Assuming your purposes are strictly for recording or distributing elsewhere (not amplified inside the sanctuary) and you don't mind having the congregation singing/background noise included, then find one (if mono) or two (if stereo) good quality mics and position it (them) so they pick up the best mix of all the organ sounds and the congregation/praise band as desired. I would start with a placement of 2/3 toward the front and 2/3 toward the ceiling and, if using only one, slightly off center. Adjust front/back and up/down until you get the desired mix of all the sounds you want or until the aesthetic police arrest you.  ;)

As for specific mic types, again it depends on your desired quality level. The most common mic for this use would be a small diaphragm condenser mic such as a Shure KSM 137 or similar.  If you want something smaller you can probably use a typical 'choir mic' like an Audio-Technica U853R or similar. Due to God's laws of physics, generally the smaller the mic the less bass frequencies it will pick up.  Read the mic specs and match the mics to your desired outcome.

Hope this helps!

Doug Sebens

Lynden, Wa.

Karisa:  I'm an organist and am familiar with the "Digital" organ world-specifically Allen, Rodgers, etc.  I just went through the process with our own congregation.  It is unfortunate that your Allen Rep, doesn't know or refuses to assist you in putting the organ through the sound system.  It can happen.  I'm not sure what specific model organ you have, but it might be something that Allen Corp, might be able to solve for you.  Check out their website for contact information.  

If this is specifically for recording purposes, your least expensive and most practical way is to use a microphone - with that I would contact your local AV technician to find the right microphone.  But if you desire to incorporate the organ into the overall mix on your sound system, then it would be good to contact Allen Organ Corp.

If your organ is aging out and is needing replacement anyway, your faithful organists should have a say in what's next, especially if it is your desire to keep them involved in worship leadership.

But my humble opinion is to keep the organ you have if it isn't a sound quality/service of the instrument issue and a recording issue only.  This may be an unpopular opinion, but it's the members of your congregation you are serving not the "church down the road".

Hey, all!

TL;DR:

Feeding the Allen's own, internal RCA connections to your mixer through DI boxes will cost you about $200 for fantastic results. New speakers and mics will be brutally difficult, cost several thousand dollars, take a very long time, and provide inferior results.

Long Story:

We are in the midst of upgrades ourselves and are seeking similar solutions. We upgraded to a digital mixer last year and now we are attempting to capture and perhaps stream one or more of our services in HD, but we need to capture the audio from our classic 90's Allen organ. I'm with the musicians on this one- the organ is an astounding human musical interface; there is nothing else like it. Hang on to it!!

A- (Several $K, dubious results) The mic'd system will require new speakers, maybe new amps, expensive installations, visual clutter, and to do it right, several mics in odd places around the room. For example, in our Sanctuary, our organ feeds its own 8 speaker cabinets, and all of them have internal crossovers and three speakers each. That means there are 24 separate speakers in there, all pointing in different directions. Mic'ing and mixing it right (on video) would take serious production magic and plenty of money. You would spend several thousand dollars, easy. 

If you are going to spend money on speakers, then upgrade your house mains that you use all the time!

B- ($200, fantastic results) A direct system would take existing RCA outs from the Allen (think red and white connectors on your old component stereo system) to DI boxes and out to XLRs (regular 3-pin microphone cables). You could probably get the whole rig for less than $200 in pristine quadraphonic. 

My first choice would be a set of stereo RCA DI boxes like the ART CleanBox Pro.  Allen organs use RCAs to pass line level signals to their amps and they also potentially have dedicated outputs from what I see. (More below) You would want those DI boxes as close as possible to the Allen, running XLRs back to your mixer (XLRs are great at rejecting interference). There are power outlets inside your organ, so you can use a small power supply inside to run the AC adapter for the ARTs, and I would be tempted to mount them inside the organ case.

Cracking the back cover of our Allen (an MDS 26 from 1995), there are several promising leads. 

1- On the floor of the case, there are two pairs of RCAs that clearly read "out". If those work at line level like an old stereo system, that would give us quadraphonic sound right there. I plan to test this out tomorrow with our organist, just to see what the levels are like.

2- Failing that, there is a spot for a 6-pin "P945 Headphone / Tape out" on a rear panel. I'm pretty confident we could do something with this as well, similar to the above setup but with the extra step of pin to RCA conversion and some connector soldering. No big deal, though admittedly sad because this would only be stereo.

3- You could divert the RCAs before the amplifier, completely disusing the Allen amp, so once again you have RCAs that you can DI box to your board. We won't be doing this, since the speakers that our Allen tech installed work wonderfully well. We just need signal for recording and broadcast.

Like I said, we're in the middle of this ourselves, so I will let you know what else I can find out. 

I hope this helps, and God Bless you!

PS- There is an Option C that is very outside the box- if you have a digital Allen, then you have the option of using your organ as a MIDI instrument, voicing it from a powerful computer. Not exactly a cheap option, but a very intriguing one.

I'm a retired sound technician who has experienced at least part of the issue you are dealing with. Some 25 years ago our church music went from traditional organ/piano to mainly contemporary services with a full band. We also had an Allan organ. At first we experimented with the organ being part of the band, but it didn't really work. From my experience, a trained organist is more of a solo type musician who is used to carrying the entire "load" in the music part of the Service and not used to blending in as part of the band. Volume became an issue.  Also, a stage keyboard which is used in most worship bands,  is usually a background instrument that adds cording depth and support to rest of the musicians. In our situation the  regular church organ volume could not be controlled from the sound board and in the end it wasn't used at all. Since most of our services became contemporary in worship music, we gave the organ away to another church. 

John Westra