[sdiy] 60s organ sound

[Peter Snow]

OK, so I have a Farfisa VIP255 sitting in front of me (broken vibrato).  How do I get the "Slalom" feature to work? 
Looks from the advertising brochures on the net that I need some kind of foot pedal.  Anyone know exactly what type? 
There are several unmarked 1/4" jacks located inconveniently underneath the instrument.  Also there is a multi-pin
connector that looks like nothing I have seen before.  Please tell me it's not that one!

Thanks for any help.

Peter

WeAreAs1 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 12/16/04 2:14:20 PM, david.k.cornutt at boeing.com writes:
> 
> << While we're on the subject, were there actually
> 
> Farfisas that had pitch bend?  If so, how did
> 
> it work?  I remember Pat Travers saying once that
> 
> he played the organ solo on "Crash and Burn" on
> 
> a Farfisa, and that solo has some obvious pitch
> 
> bends.  Then again, Travers was full of sh** most
> 
> of the time, and to me it kind of sounds like a
> 
> Prophet-5 organ patch.   >>
> 
> Some of the 1970's-era Farfisas had a semi-useless feature called "Slalom",
> which was a kind of triggerable pitch bend.  The Slalom feature had a depth
> control (or maybe it was an attack time control?).  They had a cute little
> picture of a snow skier right next to the Slalom control.  When Slalom was turned
> on, when you played a key or keys, the pitch of the notes would drop, then slide
> back up to pitch.  It was intended, I think, to sound sort of like a Hawaiian
> steel guitar player, although it really just sounded kind of weird -- maybe
> like a very drunken Hawaiian steel player, at best.
> 
> I'm pretty sure it was just a single-trigger effect that acted globally on
> all currently played notes (that is, it wouldn't retrigger the effect until you
> released all held notes).  I never saw a Farfisa that had an actual pitch bend
> knob or lever, although some did have a fine-tuning knob, which could
> probably have been modified to work a wider-range pitch bender.  The Slalom feature
> started appearing in Farfisas after the company switched over to a top-octave
> divider tone generation system (earlier 1960's Farfisas had individually
> tunable oscillators for each of the twelve master pitches).  With top-octave divider
> systems, it's a lot easier to implement things like pitch bend and master
> tuning controls.  If you search the web for "Farfisa VIP255", you'll find more
> info on the Slalom feature.
> 
> Michael Bacich
> 
> PS -- My spell checker insists that I spell "Farfisas" as "Pharisees".  Hmmm,
> does it know something that I don't?