[sdiy] DIY 32-note pedal-boards

[Tom Wiltshire]

On 22 Oct 2007, at 03:17, Ken Stone wrote:

> Not at all. We are talking Lowrey, Thomas, and Kawaii, Balani etc..  
> Junk
> that was made with maximum gimmicks for minimum cost, or was just  
> to crude
> to be of any value, either audiably or historically.
>
> By late 70's, early 80's even some of them had some value, as  
> electronics
> got better. But still, buy the time one of these things has been  
> sitting in
> the garage or cellar for 20 years, after years of abuse by dirty  
> fingered
> children, a lot of individual examples would still come under the  
> landfill
> categorey.

My own experience has been that the older the organ, the better, at  
least sonically. The improvements in electronics (and particularly  
integration) enabled manufacturers to cut even more corners.
The early seventies organs use individual oscillators for the top  
octave, combined with discrete dividers and filters. The individual  
oscillators improves the sound no end.
By the later seventies, you see more and more top-octave-generator  
chip designs, coupled to IC flip-flops for dividers. This makes for a  
much 'flatter' sound.
The only cheap eighties organs I've seen is based on the M109 single- 
chip organ, which makes a horrible sound. It's harsh, dry, flat, and  
lifeless. Hideous.

As far as parts go, I'd only ever pull keyboards, pedalboards, amps,  
speakers, and power supplies out. The other stuff is not worth the  
effort (ancient transistors, ancient IC flipflops worth pence, dried  
up capacitors, etc etc).

Regards,
Tom
.