The 2 manual Yamaha HS8 organ with expanders and full midi to Miditiser and Hauptwerk
Other Organs
Eminent Alpha 32 Church Organ
Ringway 1000e
The 2 manual Yamaha HS8 organ. The HS8 Organ is dwarfed by the Eminent organ next to it. The Yamaha HS8 like many other home organs has two four octave manuals set one octave apart. I started with an HS4 back in 1988 and played this for a few years, then later upgraded to a second hand HS8. It is a fun organ to play with a sampled pipeorgan, and Piano and a few other instruments. All the others are generated and although at the time the instruments were good, the sounds are not as good as the new sampled organs. All the voices can be set onto each manual. There is an additional solo (lead) voice that can be played on either the top or the bottom manual. The HS8 has 16 general registers that can recall a particular voice setting. There is a small 1 1/2 octave range for the pedals. These are the common short spinnet -variety and are not polyphonic. The simple LED info screen gives the speed of the accompaniment section and an lcd screen gives a menu listing.
Accessories
AVS10 The AVS-10 AWM voice expander provides twelve new instrument voices. Cost is about £50
CVS10 Adds Hammond style drawbars to the organ. These sounds are much louder than the original organ but can be used at the same time as the organ. I picked one of these up later in the life of the organ. I hoped it would give the realistic drawbar sound but basically the interface was dreadful and extremely hard to operate, so it was best to use the default selection Cost is about £150. The sound was good for its time, but compared to modern instruments it is not good.
MDR2-4 Disk Drive. I have lots of disks and I eventally picked one of these up. It is hard in the modern world to use single density floppy disks for the organ and it was hard to keep the machine in good running order.
Midi - Sequencers and syntesizers.
The different notes are selected from a rolling menu and placed then into the different banks, Green organ flutes, Blue Strings, Red the AWM sounds and a solo lead stop with is monophonic. This assigns the two manuals. The pedals can be assigned any instrument on the programmable stop and are also monophonic. The generals are assigned in the stand manner using the M button and pressing the general button you wish to assign the registration to.
