Pedalboard

Design

There are AGO (American Guild of Organists), BDO (Bund Deutscher Orgelbaumeister) and RCO (Royal College of Organists) standards. Then there are non-standard versions which include compact versions and smaller sizes, for example 13 pedals. If you are planning on playing a variety of music types, 13 pedals will be insufficient.

With the two different geometries involved: flat or concave (dished) and parallel or radial (like a fan), that gives us 12 combinations to look at, not including differing standards of spacing and size.

Examples of pedalboards

Flat pedalboards are very common in Britain. Concave are a bit easier as they are “dished” to match how your feet swing. Radial slightly angle the keys toward you. The pedalboard you decide on should be one you like and want to use. My preference is 30 keys, concave and radial, but I could live with concave and parallel. 32 keys would be OK but size is an issue with my house.

Your choices are:

*I’m not sure you can find a flat and radial pedalboard. I’ve put them in because it is one the possible variations in layout.

Companies

I started searching websites for companies that provided pedalboards that were either complete or kits. There are some, but not all will sell to an individual. Shame as they could increase sales, but they are probably busy with large-scale projects. I emailed and searched for a number of different companies and found several that seemed reasonable prices and responded to my queries. This list is not exhaustive and if you find others that you have dealt with, please let me know.

John’s Organ Works

I can hear you now…‘wait, did’t you talk about him in relation to keyboards?’ John seems to be able to supply you with, not just keyboards, but pedalboards, MIDI components, and various other parts. He buys organ pedalboards and retrofits them with MIDI encoders. There is only one problem - the guy is successful and has a waiting list.

Look at the website and, if you are interested, email his with what you would like. He will honestly tell you what his waiting list looks like. According to his email with me he gets in different pedalboards so you might be able to request a particular style. Do remember that he can only modify what comes in so if you specify a 32 pedal, concave, radial in oak and walnut you might be waiting a very, very long time before one becomes available.

Organparts is part of POM (Pécs Organ Manufactory), a maker of pipe organs. They respond with pricing and shipping information, and offer complete products or kits. They look pretty good and the company sells to individuals. The pedalboards can be found on their website. Pedalboards will still require some form of switch (contact) plus encoder board.

Note that they seem to have two different Concave, Radial 32 key pedalboards: one is AGO and the other probably BDO. Check with them before purchase.

PedalMidiKit ®

PMK sell pedalboards in a variety of styles and configurations. They even include a folding pedalboard that could make them more portable for work. They make pedalboards from 13 key to 32. I didn’t order from them but they do offer good prices. Hopefully the table is accurate. These are kits but also available assembled; if you are interested you should contact them for what configurations are available.

You can get pedalboards from Viscount that include full MIDI encoding and inputs for expression pedals. You can buy the complete set of pedalboard and expression pedals from Thomman. (See Expression pedals for more info. They have one little flaw you should be aware of.)

Content Organ

While Content sell a 2 manual keyboard, the Compact-224, they also sell pedalboards. I couldn’t find a price on the net nor could I get details. I really wish companies would be more forthcoming about their products.

Others

And then there are non-standard sizes, like the Allen Organ “Princess” pedalboard. Surprisingly, the video they have is pretty good in explaining the sizes of AGO vs FLAT vs the “Princess” pedalboard.

Other pedal manufacturers are listed under Resources. There are a number of them and they vary in price, size and availability. Shipping may be expensive, depending upon where they are coming from because pedalboards are very heavy.

Used organ pedalboards

While I can’t build a pedalboard, I do think I can wire up some contacts so I began a search. I wanted a 30 note pedalboard, preferably radiating and concave. I, again, checked with John's Organ Works but he was busy for several months. I put my name on the waiting list and started checking Ebay.

Ebay brings up pedalboards of all descriptions and conditions. I bid on several but when the price when really high I dropped out. I don’t think £250 for a pedalboard in poor condition is a good deal and I don’t want to strip it down and refurbish it at that price.

Prices I’ve seen vary between about £100 and £300, final price. Some of the price depends on condition and whether is is ready-to-go. Some of it seems random and the seller thinks that because a new pedalboard can cost over £1,000 they can charge you that for a used without any electronics. You will usually need to pick it up as they don’t ship them. Some people will work with a shipper that you pick. Don’t expect them to be cheap to ship - they do tend to be rather large and heavy.

I bought from eBay. You can get more information on it here.

Encoder

Remember I said I couldn’t do woodworking but can write code? I decided to give it a try. I bought a cheap Arduino-compatible processor and started writing code. It would do several things:

1. Encode the pedalboards
2. Encode toe pistons (to be added)
3. Encode up to 4 expression pedals, if needed.

If you can’t code - or don’t want to - look at my resources for MIDI encoders. There are quite a few. You can also look at how I wrote mine and what features it has. I’m sure I could have written the code better but, to be honest, I want to use it.