In choosing
an organ, it is important not to rely on 'sales presentation',
which is very easily achieved in a transitory meeting,
but to look at the track record of the manufacturer
concerned. An agent can promise much but deliver
little: since 1960, we have -- uniquely in Great
Britain -- the longest and most enviable record for
quality, stability, and longevity of our instruments.
All too often one finds an electronic instrument with
a most ambitious specification and stoplist, at an incredibly
low price. It is very easy to put a large number
of stops on an instrument, but impossible to justify
that number when one starts listening to a full organ
produced from a cheap minimal amount of hardware; the
results are rather akin to amplifying a string quartet
and hoping that it will sound like a full string orchestra.
We therefore will not offer cheaper organs with anything
less than Copeman Hart quality voicing.
There are many large-looking electronic organs in existence,
where an enormous number of stops are derived from a
minimal amount of hardware or generator sources; technically,
this is very easy -- but the practice is musically stultifying
and ethically dishonest.
We will provide large specifications only when the
building is appropriate, and the cost of the instrument
can reflect the additional amount of computer hardware
required for the number of stops. `Full organ' is
never an anti-climax on a Copeman Hart instrument;
we will not over-amplify a small instrument,
just to make it fill a large building -- and, conversely,
we would never condense the outputs of 60 or more
stops to emerge from only a few loudspeaker channels.
Whilst the technical reasons for this may not
be apparent to organist or listener, all are unanimous
in the praise they give to the end result.
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