Why Allen
Sound, technology, and sustainability — the three reasons Allen is chosen above all others worldwide.
Sound. Technology. Sustainability.
Congregations rarely buy more than one organ in a generation. It is worth knowing what separates one builder from another before the committee votes.
Sound
An Allen does not have a single voice. Every instrument arrives with several complete stop lists built in, each one independently scaled and voiced with its own audio settings — so the organ can speak as a Willis, as a Cavaillé-Coll, as an Aeolian-Skinner, or in Allen's own signature style, without recabling anything. Theatre instruments carry Wurlitzer, Barton, and Morton voicings the same way.
Those voices come from real pipes. Allen's tonal directors sampled fine pipe organs around the world and built the library from what they heard there, not from synthesis. It is the reason pipe organ owners hire Allen too: Allen is regularly chosen to add digital voices and modern consoles to existing pipe instruments, including notable European installations.
Technology
Allen sold the first digitally sampled organ in 1971 — roughly two decades ahead of anyone else, and the original now sits in the Smithsonian. Today, APEX II represents Allen’s eighth generation of digital organ technology.
Acoustics built for intelligible speech are usually unkind to music. A dry, carpeted sanctuary makes even a fine instrument sound thin. Most organs answer that with synthetic digital reverb. Allen answers it with Acoustic Portrait, a convolution system that reproduces the measured acoustic signature of real rooms — small chapels through large cathedrals — rather than approximating one.
Sustainability
Consoles are assembled by hand from selected woods and veneers, with no knock-down construction anywhere in the cabinet. Allen is the only digital builder that fully finishes the interior wood of the console, and the electronics sit inside a protective metal chassis. Expression shoes are cast aluminum, not plastic or wood, and the shoe cage is sealed metal so nothing gets into the console from underneath.
The premium keyboards use wood keysticks on felted pivots, individually adjustable so the touch stays even for decades. Underneath each key is a sealed reed switch triggered by a magnet — nothing to wear, nothing for dust or humidity to reach. A key contact that fails mid-service is a problem no congregation should have to think about.
An Allen will not sound dated in ten years either, because the sound library and control software are designed to be updated rather than replaced.
Since 1939
Allen Organ Company sold the world's first electronic organ in 1939 and remains the largest builder of church organs in the world. Every instrument is still built in Macungie, Pennsylvania.