This is a Hauptwerk console, which has been constructed and built in just over a year by Colin Peacock from Renatus Ltd. in Bideford, Devon, Great Britain.
After a design draft and the first visit to Bideford, the planning of the console began. It was a pleasure to work with Colin, as he always found ingenious solutions, even for tricky implementations. When the organ was almost finished, I visited the Renatus company again to discuss any last open questions.
The console was built by Renatus according to the British RCO specifications. It consists of a maple, stainless steel and glass construction with two Acer 23 inch touch screens (T232HL Abmjjz). UHT (Orlishausen, Germany) supplied the four keyboards with pressure point stimulation (Series 40, key form E 85/50). The lower keys are covered with cream-colored mineral; the upper keys are made of blackwood. The pedalboard was built by Renatus.
The cables for the three LED lights (pedal light, music deck light and one LED strip below the music deck) are routed invisibly. No wires are visible — not even from the back of the console.
The organ bench with music rack is equipped with bass pucks. The cables of the pucks are also invisibly routed in the bench.
The MIDI logic cards were designed and built by Renatus. They are very flexible. There are 6 boards installed in total. They are connected in series to appear as a single MIDI controller. The manuals are not cheap, but they are worth the money. And the service from UHT is incredible. Each manual (including the associated thumb pistons) has its own logic board, and the pedal (including the toe pistons) is connected to one of the manuals. Rocker tabs and four LCD displays share two other boards.
Each piston can be programmed individually, so that even different pistons can fire the same MIDI message. A piston can also be programmed to fire two messages (one when pressed and one when released). This flexibility allows the same MIDI message to be used with any number of pistons. It is often difficult to assign more than two pistons to a function. With the Renatus hardware, this is not a problem at all. For example, I have plus and minus thumb pistons for the stepper for each manual, two toe pistons, and two hidden pistons behind the right monitor.
Internally, the console relies heavily on USB ports. A USB hub with 7 ports is installed in the console. The Renatus keyboard controller requires (only) one port; the touchscreen monitors also require one port each. There are several additional ports that can be accessed without opening the console. I use one of these ports for a dongle, for example.
The console turns on automatically when the Hauptwerk computer (a Mac Pro) starts; it turns off automatically when the computer shuts down.
In summary, designing and setting up the organ was as much fun as playing it. I would like to thank Colin Peacock for his patience in finding solutions to tricky things, making my dream console a reality.
IFor further questions, please feel free to contact me (or even visit me). It will be my pleasure to demonstrate all the unique features in detail.
