Johannus Sweelnick 30

Build around 1998

Pure digital, good sounding classical church organ. It was build in 1999, and has still innovative technology inside, like 56 kHz sampling with 24 bit. Analog summations.

There are even some speakers behind the manuals, only active for some reed registers.

 Additional speakers on the top is a must, because its brightness gets lost, when most of the sound warm your feet. Unfortunately the Line output signal is not very hot, this means, you need a good preamplifier to drive the additional active speakers.

I do not know, why Johannus does not provide any service manuals. It will be impossible to maintain this organ on myself or to make some modifications (I had some ideas…).

This is the tone generation, 8 “voice cards” on the backplane. The ICs in the black sockets are probably the Voice ROMs. That means, they are principally exchangeable with other organ pipe samples. I am wondering why there is voice card #6 missing? Was an upgrade with additional samples planned, but never realized? Would the voice card of the Johannus expander (yes it’s the same) fit here?

External Speaker System

This organ has an 8-channel amplification system, but all speakers are blowing at your knees. As a result the brilliance and the spatial effect is reduced, sounding rather flat. I’ve got 6 bookshelf speakers, disconnected 6 internal speakers and connected these external new ones to the existing amplifiers. Two speakers with the reverberation part are now behind the player, two on top of the console and the other two left and right hands side of the organ. I had to intonate the volumes of each tab and speakers according to the new acoustical situation. Now the new sound is amazing! So transparent and spatial, each tab can be localized, with reverb separated. Highly recommended!