Compton Organs still in churches?

[chrislawtonorganist]

=

[Lucien Nunes]

Well if anybody knows where to find them I'd say it was you Chris! As it happens I was having a conversation about this with Anton Stormlund last week, he's the owner of the only Compton cinema organ in Denmark and he also happens to have a 3m Electrone. His suggestion was to start a register of all known Electrones other than the very widespread models such as the 357, 363 & CH2. Which is OK in principle, although the resulting list would be frighteningly short! So I suggested that although we weren't specifically interested in rooting out every last Sonatina, we should nonetheless include data for literally any instrument we know about, as that will help to build up a picture of Electrone distribution such as remains as of now. My impression, based on discussions with Robert Cook, is that even the late models are being taken out of service pretty fast now.

I will start a database and upload a record form that has fields for all the vital statistics. Dave and I will add in details of ours as and when possible to confirm, other owners of large numbers of instruments (that's you Richard C) will need to get busy checking those spec plates. Dating instruments one meets in the field can be a bit tricky but I will try to list all the known methods. It's quite important to collect date information even from humble 357s etc as this can be used to pin down dates of more significant organs once a proper picture of the serial numbering schemes is built up.

Here beginneth the Electrone Register!

Lucien

[chrislawtonorganist]

=

[chrislawtonorganist]

=

[Lucien Nunes]

Useful info Chris. In churches: 5x 357, 4x 363, 2x CH/2, 1x 347. Not enough to make very accurate or statistically significant inferences, but broadly confirms what we already supected - the popular three classical models account for most of the surviving Electrones in churches, or at least in churches that have responded to your enquiry. I have a theory that any church willing and in a position to invest a large sum of money for one of the Special Series organs would have been equally eager to replace it once newer technology became available.

Lucien

[highlandelectrone]

Chris

If you look at the St Marks Dallam website, click on "Building" then look at the three pictures on the right of the page about three quarters down, in the middle picture you can just see a 347 console.

Richard

[highlandelectrone]

In the folder "Mothering Sunday 09" there is an even better view of the 347 console. I wonder if its still there? Is there a cupboard with a cabinet in it perhaps???

[Lucien Nunes]

The Church was built in 1953 so the 347 could well be original if it is still there. It would be very useful to know its serial number as it's midway between a couple of dates I have numbers for. Perhaps when they answered you saying the organ was removed 20 years ago, they were talking about a different organ? I am happy to try and make contact but don't want to bombard them with calls, so will only do so if you haven't been in touch recently Chris. At least with the aid of the picture we can clarify what it is we are talking about.

Lucien

[mcmurdo]

I was asked to try and service an electrone at (I think it was) St John's RC Church Kidsgrove (Stoke on Trent) a few years ago. I just wonder what happened to it, I think it was a model 347 with retro-fitted solid state 1970's amp chassis.

[Lucien Nunes]

AFAIK the 347 at Kidsgrove was dismantled in situ, Christian Cartwright salvaged the generator cabinet after the event and kindly donated it to our spares stock. It has already supplied a couple of bits to the 347 still in use at Church of the Ascension, Ealing. Quite a few were converted to solid-state in the 1970s and 80s, mostly by Fred Allen. Some were fitted with surplus Compton-built 70+70W amps to the RCA design, probably while Compton still existed and when Fred was at Makin, until they switched over to Hugh Banton's MOSFET design. Later 347 conversions used recycled valve amp chassis with various flavours of amp module built onto them. It is a pity that many instruments lost their original valve guts but this was all part of Fred's otherwise admirable policy of maintaining for the future, in an era when valves were rapidly becoming unavailable possibly forever.