GUESS WHO FOUND AN ORGAN FOREVER AGO?
Found an organ (psure it's an AceTone B-422) on the side of the road one day while some guy was clearing out his dad's house, and managed to get this organ for free. Dude said he didn't get a chance to try it out, nabbed it anyway and stuffed it in my room.
Turns out, it doesn't work.
Turns out, it has a bunch of built in features that DO work.
There's a built in vibrato, a built in reverb, a built in Rhythm Ace Drum Machine, and a God Damn Leslie-branded rotary speaker built in. The drum machine, speaker, and rotary speaker all for sure work, and since it's a 60s organ that reverb is pmuch guaranteed to be a spring tank, which is easy to repurpose. The vibrato would be cool to mess with, too. Lastly, there's a "Brilliance" switch which I'm really curious about.
As for the rest of the organ, I have a bunch of options:
1. I rip out all the keys, replace them with modern midi controllers, and turn the whole thing into a custom recording station. Problem is, the two keyboards are 44 keys each, which is pretty rare for midi controllers. They're also bigger keys than normal, so maybe there's a way to make them work, but that also makes the depth of the keys an issue I'll have to tackle. It also means the 13 bass pedals would be useless.
2. I get 1-4 Arduino boards, and rewire the keyboards so I have 2 44-key controllers, 13-pedal controller, and if I wanna get crazy with it the swell pedal and whatever other knobs I want for midi controls. Problem is, I know nothing about Arduino or digital midi, and I'm already diving headfirst into several unfamiliar disciplines for this project as is. DOUBLE problem is, from what I can tell it would be difficult if not impossible to make the original keybeds velocity sensitive. Triple problem is, if I do decide to toss the key beds, I can't go back and Arduino it up later. I'm not gonna be able to hold onto those parts, and there's no way I could justify having a whole second house organ just to reattempt it.
3. I cut my losses, rip out the relevant electronics, and toss the rest
If I go with either of the first two (read: fun) options, it's also worth considering all the space around the keys, where I can theoretically add whatever. I've tossed around the idea of putting a 2x4 group of drum pads, maybe some knobs or even a ribbon controller somewhere. I could even put a screen there, either with real time feedback or built in synths or digital effects (maybe a raspberry pi or small computer affordable to run soundfonts or even VSTi's natively; imagine having a DIY touch screen with drawbars next to the keyboard to adjust settings, that'd be sick)
And none of that takes into consideration the multitude of cosmetic modification options possible; Paint, veneer, upholstery, LEDs, lights, VU meters, metalwork, leather, the list goes on.
I've got a bunch of ideas and I'm in the process of getting the tools together to move forward with this project.
I'm sure I can also upgrade stuff in the future.
But I'm seriously considering turning this thing into the ultimate keyboard performance desk, both for YouTube stuff as well as live (since, theoretically, it'll be a LOT lighter once the speakers and motor(s) are pulled out)
If anyone has experience with doing any of this sort of thing, I'd love to pick your brains for more info on all this stuff. Working on researching for a YouTube video about the project, including a history of the Ace Tone company that made it (with probably too much emphasis on it being founded by the same dude who founded Roland several years later).
It's a big project, but I think it'd be worth it. I'm more excited about this than I have been about virtually anything else in years.
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
izzy806
2087
germansingergirl
