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We are proud to announce the release of the 1893 J.W. Steere organ in the First Baptist Church of Owatonna, Minnesota. It has a long and interesting history – the organ was installed with funds donated by the famous Pillsbury family, and has served the church for nearly 130 years.

The instrument is a typical small parish instrument of that era, with plenty of 8′ tone, lots of options for color, and built sturdily to work and last with minimal maintenance. Also notable is the fact that the organ is mostly original and intact – it does have an electric blower, but one can still see the controls for the original water machine and there is still a stop knob to signal the bellows, hearkening back to the days of manual pumping.

The organ is still used for weekly services, and is in remarkably good condition considering its age. We sampled in 96kHz/24 bit, and downsampled to 48/24 after noise reduction was complete.

This continues our series of historic American organs – we are grateful to church organist Drew Meyer and the church board for allowing us to digitally preserve the sound of this organ for the future. Do note a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the sample set will go back to the church.

To order a copy of this historic organ go HERE

Introductory price $89, and includes a complimentary free organ – a small instrument on the Concordia University Irvine campus.  The instrument was a home organ which was donated to Concordia University and came to the university in 2019.  It sits in the university’s new Zhang Concert Hall.

We’re pleased to release the Trinity Georgetown organ, a 1925 E.M. Skinner organ, one of the finest of its era. The instrument went through a five-year renovation and expansion program between 1995 and 2000.  This historic instrument was originally installed in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress until it was brought to Holy Trinity in 1955. Contracts were signed in 1995 with the Lively-Fulcher Organ Company to rebuild/refurbish and enlarge the instrument.

• In the summer of 1996, the company replaced the failing wind chests of the great and choir divisions of the organ. The swell and pedal wind chests were in good repair.
• In the fall of 1997, Lively-Fulcher revoiced and tonally regulated the entire instrument, which over the years, had been worked on and added to by various organ builders. The work brought the organ into one cohesive tonal ensemble.
• In the summer of 1999, a much-needed new console was installed. This new console had the stop preparations for the additions that were to come.
• Finally, in the spring of 2000, those additions became a reality. Included were five new stops to the pedal division including a full-length 32′ pedal reed, and a Walker digital 32′ Bourdon. Other additions included a 4′ reed on the swell, a 16′ Bourdon on the Great, a Tierce on the choir and a solo “Festive Trumpet”.

This sample set was recorded in 24 bit 96kHz, all noise reduction was done at the high resolution before converting to 24/48 for Hauptwerk

We are releasing this set only in v5, since we have had very minimal sales in our sets released for v4.  The set will sell during the introduction period for $199, and for a limited time, if you purchase the v5 set, you will also receive the 1929 Glendale Skinner organ for free! (previous purchasers of the Glendale instrument will be eligible to buy for $99 during the introduction period with a valid proof of purchase note that the set is not available for HW v4, so you must have either purchased the V5 Skinner or upgraded to HW 5 )

There are several demos on the page for this organ, all have been done in HW-V, with some carefully added reverb via the new convolution reverb included with HW-V. Those specific setting are included on the page so you can duplicate them in your setup.

This is the second of our releases as a combined partnership with CLR, we continue plans to release new HW American sample sets, we have more coming!

The BOGO sale will run until September 15, 2020 – thanks for your continuing support, and best wishes for all during this challenging time!

Greetings, everyone!

Just a quick note to let you know most of our sample sets (everything except the Wangerin instruments and the FBR Schantz) are on sale for 20% off starting on Black Friday – November 29th, 2019. Use the code BF2019 at checkout to apply the discount. EDIT: There were issues with our shopping cart, so we’ve returned to the former PayPal method, new prices are implemented without a code.

A few things to note – at this time there are no plans to sell the Covenant Presbyterian Aeolian-Skinner or the Concordia University Irvine Casavant for HW5, and sometime after the sale period they will be removed from the site – if you want either of those, get ’em now! (and only for HW 4.21). Also, after a run of nearly 16 years, the venerable FBR Schantz will join the ranks of retired products as well.

Secondly, our future releases will be for HW-5 only (except for any which might not use the encryption), as we will not be able to get new license updates for HW 4.21 after 4 months, so there is no reason to expend the extra effort to develop for two HW versions in that case.

Thirdly, at this time we are evaluating whether or not to sell the Christ Cathedral Aeolian-Skinner and the St. Mark’s Skinner for HW-5 and have not made that decision yet, although we will before the end of the sale period. Please LET US KNOW if you are interested in purchasing either of these sets for HW-5, it will help us decide.

Finally, for all customers who have purchased encrypted sets for HW4.x in the past, all of our sets have been re-encrypted for HW-V, and will be available for download HERE, regardless of future plans.

We have some exciting new sets in progress, as well as further tweaking of the former CLR sets still to come, we look forward to continuting our support of Hauptwerk and this community.

$19.99 – print copy

Now available at this link for ordering