Rodgers Instruments LLC designs and manufacturers classical organs, using
stereophonic digital organ technology. Their installed product base ranges from pipe organs
and electronic organs of all sizes, to hybrid instruments combining both technologies
of which Rodgers was a pioneer and is overwhelmingly the market leader. Rodgers was founded in 1958 by Rodgers W. Jenkins and
Fred Tinker, employees of Tektronix, Inc., of Portland, Oregon and members of the
Tektronix team that was developing transistor-based oscillator circuits. It was the first electronic organ builder to use
solid-state oscillators and also produced the first solid-state organ amplifiers. It was the first to use microprocessors in
church organs and it introduced MIDI to the church organ world in
1987. Although it did not introduce digital sampling in church organs, it was, however, the
first company to use a software-based system to reproduce pipe organ sounds. It is the only digital organ company in the United
States that uses stereo sampling techniques of organ pipes.
Rodgers is now the largest manufacturer of consoles for pipe organs in the world, as well as the largest builder of custom
digital church organs. Their primary factory is located in Hillsboro, Oregon with
additional manufacturing done in Japan and Italy. All full size,
American Guild of Organist's standard 32 pedal note classical organ models are built in the Oregon factory.
Corporate Affiliations
Custom Four Manual Rodgers Trillium organ console installed in a church
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Originally controlled by officers of Tektronix and the founding engineers, in September 1977, Rodgers became part of
CBS Musical Instruments along with Steinway & Sons
pianos, Fender guitars, Rhodes
electric pianos, Gemeinhardt flutes, and a number of other instrument brand names. In 1985
CBS divested itself of Rodgers, along with Steinway and Gemeinhardt, all of which were purchased by Steinway Musical Properties.
Rodgers is now a subsidiary of the Roland Corporation and has been since May 1, 1988.
In addition to its own Rodgers organs, Rodgers produces Atelier home organs and digital pianos for Roland Corporation as Roland's
North American manufacturing facility.
The affiliation with Roland, a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of over $700 million, has further
strengthened Rodgers historical strengths of high product quality and successfully innovative organ design. Rodgers has been
associated with, and continues to be responsible for some of the most creative advances in modern organ building.
Touring Organs
Organist Virgil Fox brought Rodgers organs into the limelight in the late 1960s and early
1970s when he used a Rodgers Touring Organ, built in 1966 and known as "Black Beauty," for his "Heavy Organ" concerts, including
a 1970 all Bach performance with light show at the Fillmore East Auditorium in New York.
Fox also designed and played the dedication concert on Rodgers' five manual Carnegie Hall
Organ in 1974. A sister five manual instrument to the Carnegie Hall Organ, named by Fox the "Royal V", served as Fox's tour organ
for the 1975-76 concert season, but was unwieldy to tour with. He subsequently stopped leasing Rodgers instruments and purchased
a smaller Allen Organ that was easier to transport. The Royal V organ, he designed, was used
at Fox's funeral in the Crystal Cathedral after he died on October 25, 1980.
This organ, used at Fox’s 1980 funeral was in 1983, permanently installed in the Meishusama Hall of the Shinji Shumeikai in
Minsono, Japan. In mid-2004, this same organ was updated to Rodgers Trillium technology. Dan Miller and McNeill Robinson, the
consultant on the project, revised and updated the organ’s specification in the 2004 technology update.
The current Rodgers touring organ is Hector Olivera's "The King", a four manual organ that Oilvera plays in various concert
venues nationally.
Technology
Until 2005, smaller models of electronic and hybrid organs were supplied as standard models off the shelf, while larger models
and pure pipe organs were custom designed. Today, Rodgers' Trillium Masterpiece instruments are custom designed through Rodgers'
Organ Architect, while some models remain as standard designs.
Rodgers introduced its paralleled Digital Signal Processing (DSP) system – Parallel Digital Imaging on November 20, 1990.
Rodgers organs use multiple sets of special Roland DSPs optimized for stereophonic musical instrument sound generation, including
the specific nuances needed to generate pipe organ sound in high resolution stereophonic fields.
Rodgers patented Digital Domain Expression introduced on the Rodgers 960 model in 1995, offers swell box modeling in the
digital domain. It includes realistic expression delays, high frequency dampening and phase shifts of sound across a stereo field
as expression shoes are opened or closed. In addition, organists are allowed to adjust swell shade thickness to create striking
swell box realism.
Using Rodgers RSS technology the acoustics of a modeled room, user defined by room size and wall material becomes an integral
part of the organ's generated sound. RSS is a four channel system based on biaural processing to create real time acoustic models
of the environment. Transaural processing is also used to compensate for crosstalk of the sound coming from the left sound source
to the right ear and the right sound source to the left ear. The result is Rodgers patented sound holograms that allow the
playing of music in the acoustic selected.
Television
In 2006, a Rodgers Allegiant 657 was installed in the family chapel of the White Family on ABC
Television's , highly rated “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”.
Previously, John Ratzenberger’s “Made in America” Travel
Channel show featured at segment on Rodgers filmed at Rodgers’ Hillsboro, Oregon plant. That episode is still appears from
time to time on the Travel Channel.
Rodgers factory is also featured in Karen Axelrod and Bruce Brumberg’s popular “Watch it Made in the U.S.A.” books profiling
interesting factory tours of American manufacturing facilities.
See also
- Virgil Fox (who played Rodgers' "Black Beauty" and "Royal V" organs in his "Heavy Organ"
tours)
- Roland Corporation (Rodgers builds Roland Atelier organs and digital pianos.
- John Ratzenberger’s “Made in America”
References
External links
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