[sdiy] The value of a Lowery "Piano Organ"... P'organ?

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Wednesday 02 July 2008 05:36, anthony wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There's a nice gentleman who runs a little antiques/odds&ends store close
> to where I live. He has this Lowery Piano-organ that he won't sell yet
> because he's trying to research how much it's worth. I guess he had a guy
> come work on it, because  he told me the thing has 75 tubes in it. And a
> whole piano to boot! It doesn't look like it has very many features and
> there aren't many stops.
>
> I gave him my off-the-cuff estimate that it would cost more to move it than
> it was worth. That is if you care about the piano part. Piano moving is
> serious business and if you're a serious piano owner (like me), you'll do
> the right thing and pay real piano movers to move it - even if it's a
> relatively crappy spinet.
>
> But me, I don't care about the piano part in this thing much, except maybe
> to strap the sustain pedal down and make a "piano reverb" for it. (Almost
> like the VST plug-in I have that emulates one. Of course the real thing is
> a little less versatile, but what the hay...). If I bought it, I'd take it
> apart and take it home it pieces. I can see not being very interested in
> restoring a piece like this. The piano sounds like it hasn't been tuned
> since 1972. It just seems like I'd have more fun with the oscillator & amp
> guts.
>
> But this proprietor seems to think it might have some collector value. I
> couldn't get close enough to any part that might show a model number. But
> it looks like an old spinet piano with some switches (not very many) above
> the keyboard. There may have been other switches that I may have
> overlooked, but I don't think so. Other Lowery organs may have some
> collector value, but I think this thing is close to built-in-tape-recorder
> territory.
>
> Still, there's those 75 tubes. I'd guess it's pretty old.
>
> But I don't want to be the one to give him the low value report. I wish
> he'd just take my low-ball offer, because this guy could use the space. He
> tried to pawn off a console stereo unit to me: A slide-out Fisher
> Philharmonic receiver with a BSR turntable built-in on top. "It's a tube
> unit," he says. I have him drag it out to look at the tube chart on back
> because this thing was too small to be a tube unit. I could just tell. Well
> there WAS a chart on back but it just showed the location of the
> transformers, some caps and the TRANSISTORS. (Weird, but helpful...)

Early transistor unit,  when they still carried that practice over from the 
tube days...

> I told him it was a solid state unit even before he drug it out, but he was
> certain. He said he'd just donate it to Goodwill then. Some shmoe will get
> a good stereo that they won't even appreciate. It was tempting, but I don't
> have room for a console that big. The speakers in it might have been worth
> it, but the damping factor would probably have been all wrong for the tube
> amps I make. I dunno. I do keep my eyes peeled for consoles though because
> people throw them out all the time, not knowing the treasures that lie
> underneath. I still wanna know what happened to my Gramma's stereo...
>
> But I digress... (what else is new?)
>
> Anybody have a guess? An independent guestimate appraisal? Looking up
> Lowery Piano Organs on the web yielded up SQUAT. Or dweebs who just
> happened to be named Lowery.

I used to work on some of that stuff.  The thing that you need to do is look 
at the tube numbers.  Some of them are using pretty common numbers,  and 
those might be able to be worked with,  and then there were others that used 
tubes that the tube manual described as "three-plate tetrode" -- those are 
pretty much unobtainium at this point in time,  and I wouldn't bother with 
any unit that used them.  I don't have specific tube numbers handy but you 
can find 'em by searching on "three plate tetrode" with your browser (usually 
ctrl-F) on my tubes page:

http://www.classiccmp.org/rtellason/tubes.html

The other thing that stands out in my recollection is that Lowrey used a lot 
of what were called "packaged circuits",  rectangular packages resembling the 
stuff ceramic capacitors are made out of with any number of leads all coming 
out of one edge,  and those are going to be a complete puzzle unless you luck 
out finding a schematic for the particular unit you have.  And neon bulbs.  
LOTS and LOTS of neon bulbs.

Typical of those organs is that you pull the back off,  and the chassis will 
be vertical,  and by taking out at most a few large screws,  you'll be able 
to swing the chassis down to a horizontal position,  where you can then get 
at all of the stuff that's on the back side of it.  Having it on in this 
position you can hit various keys and see neon bulbs lighting up as the keyer 
circuits go to work.  If the same number of bulbs don't light up for all keys 
the most common thing in my experience is that one of the wires for a 
particular bulb has broken off,  right at the glass envelope.

Other than that,  and the occasional power-handling tube that needs to be 
replaced,  one other thing I found with those is that some of the big power 
resistors in the power supply area will occasionally open up.  These are 
metal,  and riveted to the chassis,  with lugs sticking up that wires are 
soldered to.  Soldering another resistor across the lugs of the open section 
is the usual fix.

That and dirty contacts in the tabswitching pretty much covers all of what 
I've had to do on those over the years...


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