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Rodgers Instruments
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Rodgers Instruments LLC manufactures church organs, using patented stereophonic digital organ technology. Rodgers is the largest builder of custom church organs in the world. The company's installed product base ranges from pipe organs and electronic organs of all sizes, to pipe combination organs combining both technologies, which Rodgers pioneered and remains the market leader. Rodgers was founded in 1958 by Rodgers W.
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Rodgers Instruments LLC manufactures church organs, using patented stereophonic digital organ technology. Rodgers is the largest builder of custom church organs in the world. The company's installed product base ranges from pipe organs and electronic organs of all sizes, to pipe combination organs combining both technologies, which Rodgers pioneered and remains the market leader. Rodgers was founded in 1958 by Rodgers W. Jenkins and Fred Tinker, employees of Tektronix, Inc., of Portland, Oregon and members of a Tektronix team developing transistor-based oscillator circuits. Rodgers was the first electronic church organ builder to build solid-state organ consoles (1958) and also produced the first solid-state organ amplifiers (1962). Rodgers invented single contact keying in organs (1961) and the programmable computer memory pistons (1966) now found on almost every organ, pipe or digital. Reed switch pedal keying for organ pedalboards (1961) is another Rodgers invention now widely used in both pipe and digital organs.
In 1972, Rodgers installed the first musically successful pipe/electronic combination organ in the Atlanta area home Dr. Walter and Emily Spivey. It was a Rodgers electronic organ with the Great Division based on Ruffatti organ pipes. It included a tuning control so the pipes and electronics could stay in tune with each other.
Rodgers was the first organ company to use microprocessors in church organs and Rodgers introduced MIDI to the church organ world in 1987. Rodgers was the first company to use a software-based system to reproduce pipe organ sounds with its patented Parallel Digital Imaging technology in 1990. Rodgers is the only organ company in the United States that uses stereo sampling of organ pipes and imaged stereophonic tone generation.
Rodgers is the largest manufacturer of pipe combination organs and consoles for pipe organs in the world, as well as the largest builder of custom digital church organs. The company's primary factory is located in Hillsboro, Oregon with additional manufacturing done in Japan and Italy. All full size, American Guild of Organists standard 32 pedal note classical organ models are built in the Oregon factory.
Corporate Affiliations
Originally controlled by officers of Tektronix and the founding engineers, in September 1977, Rodgers became part of CBS Musical Instruments along with Steinway & Sons pianos, Fender guitars, Rhodes electric pianos, Gemeinhardt flutes, and a number of other instrument brand names. In 1985 CBS, divested itself of Rodgers, along with Steinway and Gemeinhardt, all of which were purchased by Steinway Musical Properties. Rodgers is now a subsidiary of the Roland Corporation and has been since May 1, 1988. In addition to its own Rodgers organs, Rodgers produces Atelier home organs and digital pianos for Roland Corporation as Roland's North American manufacturing facility.
The affiliation with Roland, a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of $786 million and annual sales over $1 billion, has further bolstered Rodgers historical strengths of high product quality and successfully innovative organ design. Rodgers has been associated with, and continues to be responsible for some of the most creative advances in modern organ building.
Touring Organs
Organist Virgil Fox helped bring Rodgers organs into the limelight in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he used a Rodgers Touring Organ, built in 1966 and known as "Black Beauty," for his "Heavy Organ" concerts, including a 1970 all Bach performance that included a light show at the Fillmore East Auditorium in New York.
On October 1, 1974, Rodgers’ five manual Carnegie Hall organ, designed by Virgil Fox, debuted in a sold-out Fox concert. The organ and Fox were praised by Time, United Press International, Ron Eyer in the New York Daily News, New York Post and by noted critic Harold Schonberg in The New York Times. Carnegie Hall’s International Organ Series for the Inaugural 1974-1975 Season included Fox, Pierre Cochereau, Claire Coci, Fernado Germani, Herman Berlinski, George Thalben-Ball and Richard Morris. As the world’s first five manual electronic organ, Rodgers’ Carnegie Hall organ was for many years listed in the Guinness World Records as the world’s largest and most powerful electronic organ.
A sister five manual instrument to the Carnegie Hall Organ, named by Fox the "Royal V", served as Fox's touring organ for the 1975-76 concert season, but proved unwieldy to tour with. The Royal V was used at Fox's funeral in the Crystal Cathedral after he died on October 25, 1980.
A second black Rodgers touring organ was active in the 1970s. The "American Beauty" was based on Rodgers then premium three manual model, the "American Classic". Concert organists who played on this instrument or "Black Beauty" (which continued touring under Roberta Bailey Artists International well into the 80s) included Ted Alan Worth, Joyce Jones, Pierre Cochereau, Herman Berlinski, Richard Morris, Keith Chapman, Douglas Marshall, John Grady, Frederick Geoghan, and Diane Bish.
The Royal V was, in 1983, refinished from black to white and permanently installed in the Meishusama Hall of the Shinji Shumeikai in Minsono, Japan. In mid 2004, this same organ was updated to newer Rodgers technology. Dan Miller and McNeill Robinson, consultants on the project, revised and updated the organ's tonal specification during the update to Trillium level Parallel Digital Imaging technology.
The current Rodgers touring organ is Hector Olivera's "The King", a black four manual organ featuring a custom French specification that Olivera plays in various concert venues nationally.
Pipe Organs
Known primarily for its digital organs, Rodgers has built scores of pipe organs and thousands of pipe combination organs. Rodgers is, and has long been, the largest builder of consoles to play pipes in the world.
The largest full pipe organ produced by the company was the Second Baptist Church (Houston, Texas) organ with five manuals and 193 pipe ranks. It was dedicated on August 23, 1987 and featured concerts on August 23 and 24th by organist Frederick Swann (then organist at the Crystal Cathedral and former President of the American Guild of Organists). In addition, it was the featured organ of the 1988 Houston National Convention of the American Guild of Organists where it was played by organist, Diane Bish.
In August 1991, another large all-pipe Rodgers organ installed at Glenkirk Presbyterian Church, Glendora, California was the cover feature of The American Organist, official journal of the American Guild of Organists.
Technology
Until 2005, smaller models of Rodgers digital and pipe combination organs were supplied as standard models, while larger models and pure pipe organs were custom designed. Today, Rodgers' Trillium Masterpiece instruments are custom designed through Rodgers' Organ Architect, while some smaller models remain as standard specification products.
Rodgers introduced its patented, paralleled Digital Signal Processing (DSP) system – Parallel Digital Imaging on November 20, 1990. Rodgers organs use multiple sets of special Roland DSPs optimized for stereophonic musical instrument sound generation, including the specific nuances needed to generate pipe organ sound in high resolution stereophonic fields.
Rodgers Digital Domain Expression introduced on the Rodgers 805 model in 1993, offers swell box modeling in the digital domain. It includes realistic expression delays, high frequency dampening and phase shifts of sound across a stereo field as expression shoes are opened or closed. In addition, organists are allowed to adjust swell shade thickness to create striking swell box realism.
Using Rodgers RSS technology, the acoustics of a modeled room become an integral part of the organ's generated sound. RSS is a four channel system based on biaural processing to create real time acoustic models of the environment. Transaural processing is also used to compensate for crosstalk of the sound coming from the left sound source to the right ear and the right sound source to the left ear. The result is Rodgers patented sound holograms that allow the playing of music in the acoustic selected.
Television
In 2006, a Rodgers Allegiant 657 was installed in the family chapel of the White Family on ABC Television's , highly rated Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Previously, John Ratzenberger's Made in America Travel Channel show featured at segment on Rodgers filmed at Rodgers’ Hillsboro, Oregon plant. That episode is still appears from time to time on the Travel Channel.
Rodgers factory is also featured in Karen Axelrod and Bruce Brumberg’s popular “Watch it Made in the U.S.A.” books profiling interesting factory tours of American manufacturing facilities.
Trivia
Ralph Deutsch, project leader of a North American Rockwell research team, patented the “Digital Organ” - US Patent # 35115792 and is normally considered the father of the digital organ. Later, in 1989, Deutsch purchased a Rodgers three manual Oxford 925 digitally controlled analog organ for his Sherman Oaks, California Temple. He was also among the first purchasers of the first software-based digital organ, when, in 1991, he bought his second Rodgers, a three manual Oxford 945 model. This organ is now installed in his son’s California home.
See also
External links
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