The Organ Forum

andyg:

Oops, my typo, putting the 1 3/5' in the wrong group! 00 8070 630 is what I'd use for a slighty mellower sounding clarinet, but 00 8080 800 is easy in a hurry! the 16' drawbar is definitely at zero, though. Adding the 16' would change the waveform from clarinet to something much deeper and more synthetic.

Andy

And, I made a typo with the 80!!!!  Guess I really did have 8's on my mind.  I almost give up on typing anymore.

The old faithful present on the lower manual Hammond is 00 7373 430, for Clarinet 8'. I think if memory is correct. I imagine the Dictionary of Hammond Organ Stops would give us many variations.  I don't know I played Hammond for many years, and just grew tired of them.  I do like other brands better.

The Thomas Californian Deluxe did  not have an 8' Clarinet on the upper or lower manual.  Instead it had a very realistic sounding Bass Clarinet 8' in the pedals.  Also, this model had four Pedal voices.  My favorite reed solo stops have always been 8' Trumpet, Clarinet, and Oboe.  I found few organs with all three together, but did on the Wurlitzer 4300 spinet series, and the Wurlitzer 4500 consoles.

James

andyg:

Only odd harmonics in a square wave, isn't it? Fundamental, then 3rd, 5th, 6th etc. No 2nd or 4th. That's 00 80808 000 on a Hammond for a basic clarinet, for example. Sawtooth was great for strings, brass, diapason because it had lots of harmonics, odd and even. Triangle was useful for guitars, non sine-wave flutes etc.

Andy,

I must've been seriously mislead.  I always thought the Triangle and Sawtooth were the same waveform by different names.  Aren't the 3 basic waveforms:

1. Sine
2. Square
3. Sawtooth/Triangle

Thanks in advance for your response.

Michael

myorgan:

I must've been seriously mislead.  I always thought the Triangle and Sawtooth were the same waveform by different names.  Aren't the 3 basic waveforms:

1. Sine
2. Square
3. Sawtooth/Triangle

Thanks in advance for your response.

Michael

The triangle literally looks like a triangle, but the saw looks more like an inclined plane followed by a vertical line a la wood saw. Of couse, I don't need to tell you that, while they might look similar, they sound very different. 

That's right, and square wave is only one of the family of pulse waves. It has a 50/50 up/down or on/off ratio, but you can vary the pulse width in any ratio, with a marked change in the timbre created.

Andy

Sine wave has one harmonic, the fundamental.

Square wave has infinite harmonics, but only odd ones (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc.). If the sides are truly vertical, the harmonics are infinite.

Triangle has infinte harmonics if the sides come to a true point, but only odd ones like the square wave, but in different ratios.

Sawtood is NOT a triangle, it has infinite harmonics if the vertical side is truly vertical, and has odd & even harmonics.

The ratio of the harmonics in a square & sawtooth is the inverse of the harmonic number: Fundamental is 1; 2nd harmonic is 1/2 the fundamental (sawtooth), 3rd harmonic is 1/3 the fundamental (sawtooth & square wave).

 In a triangle wave, if I remember right, the fundamental is the inverse of the square of the harmonic; 3rd harmonic is 1/9th the fundamental, 5th is 1/25th the fundamental, etc.

 About 1976, Thomas organs got better--they even incorporated some custom designed LSI integrated circuits, rather a rare thing at the time. Others followed within a few years. Some of the later models have very decent sounds if you got up into their mid price range. Earlier than the mid 70's though, and they were pretty rough sounding except for the top models.

Thomas was owned by Warwick Electronics (not Whirlpool), although Whirlpool was a major stockholder in Warwick. Warwick had the capacity for producing 1/3 of all the TVs sold in the WORLD in the early 70's, but ceased those operations in the late 70's basically because of poor quality. Going from tube designs to hybrid (tube & transistor designs) was difficult for them. They sold their manufacturing operations to Sanyo, who then built fine quality TVs in the same plants, same people, using Sanyo designs!

Never heard of Warwick TVs? Not surprising. They private labelled mostly for Sears, but also for Kmart (until Kmart stopped buying them because of poor quality). Thomas was a minor side business for Warwick until they stopped making TVs. Thomas lingered on for a few years after Warwick, but finally closed shop.

 Ah, ancient history!

 Toodles.

toodles:

Thomas was owned by Warwick Electronics (not Whirlpool), although Whirlpool was a major stockholder in Warwick......

......Thomas lingered on for a few years after Warwick, but finally closed shop.

 Ah, ancient history!

 

Thanks for the extra information, Toodles. I was informed by some of the senior staff at Thomas in the UK at the time that it was Whirlpool who controlled things, (and I'm sure that some of the UK literature had the Whirlpool name and logo in - you know the kind of thing I mean, like "proud to be part of Whirlpool" or whatever) and that it was they who ordered the plug to be pulled at Thomas so, given what you've now told me, we may both be correct.

I didn't know that they carried on after that, I guess that they never put those final Compucon Alpha 2 prototypes into production. Someone, somewhere would have one and we'd know about it. They were, as I said earlier, very impressive.

Thanks

Andy G

Whirlpool and Warwick, and thus Thomas, had some sort of incestuous relationship, but even those of us who worked there didn't know all of the details!

 Toodles.

The connection to Sears makes sense too. (Warwick made TVs for Sears.) The organs I used to sell back about 1977 at Sears on Redbird Mall in Duncanville TX were made by Thomas but rebranded for Sears. I think we started out using the brand name "Galaxy" but it seems like there was some kind of trademark dispute over that and we had to start calling them something else. I think the new name was "Vox" and even that turned out to be controversial. Of course it wasn't long afterwards that the whole home organ market collapsed and it became a moot issue.

Anyway, these were exact replicas of the corresponding Thomas models, no difference except the labels. They were sad little beasts, especially the very cheapest.

Thomas had earlier built some organs for Sears with the Silvertone brand name on them. I don't know if they were exact copies of Thomas models or if they were built to Sears specs.

John

The oldest Silvertone/Thomas models I remember were indeed exact copies of Thomas models, just without colored stops, some use of tan leatherette in the flat areas where the equivalent Thomas used wood.

The G and L single manuals, The H spinet, and the J chord organ managed to pull six notes out of one 12AU7 tube, but a lot of jazz chords and Baroque counterpoint was unplayable. They got Thomas started in the mass market though!!

Lee

John,

I also sold the 'Galaxy' by Sears ( Thomas ) at Redbird Mall in 1975-1976, part time only.  I'm back in Duncanville, and will be retiring from my current job at the end of November.  The 'Galaxy' was a cute but small instrument.  The top of the line was pretty good for a beginners organ.

I'm now playing a Conn 653 with 6 pipe speakers and Leslie 720/540 stack.  What a jump.  The 'original' Thomas Organ company made some decent instruments for the home market.  BTW-the mall has changed considerably! You would not know the place.  Sears is the only original store still there from 1975 when the mall opened.

Al

I once played a Thomas console in a church.  It had probably been someone's home organ.  What a piece of junk it was.  It had these big white piston like things that stuck out above the stop tabs.  There was also some kind of arpeggio device between the keyboards.  Why did Lawrence Welk endorse such a brand?  I remeber seeing a three manual in his orchestra (Trianon?) when I was a teenager. 

As for Redbird Mall (Southwest Center Mall), we never went there much but I once tried out a big white Wurlitzer 905 I think in the Melody Shop that used to be there.  I remember it had something called Symphonic Presence.  I thought it was cheesy since I was a Conn owner.  That was in 1980. 

While not a Conn, the Thomas Palace-III was a pretty decent organ - given it was made in the 60's. I picked up a used Palace-III model 903 or 904 in the 80's and it had a good sound. I recall a coupler from solo to great and using tibia 16 and 4 on both manuals, it was quite an impressive open harmony sound on the great (with the coupler). It must have had a 2nd set of generators for the solo to get that full sound. Even without the coupler, the tibias were pretty good. While their low end models probably were crap, the Palace-III was good.

For a senior center in Seattle, I wanted a 3 manual full organ with self contained speakers (due to space limitations). Also being a 3 manual, organists would be more willing to go in and perform (who would go in and play a spinette?) I found a used Palace-III model 900 for $150 on ebay just last month. Other than being really dirty, its OK. A thorough cleaning and after all these years, everything still works! The 900's sound is not as good as the 903 or 904 but still good. I'm sure if lots of the old capacitors are replaced,  it would be better.

 Had I waited, there is a Conn 651 right now still under $600 on ebay. (but I wanted to be sure they had an organ for Xmas and you never know what will show up on ebay.) If things to well in the senior center and the organ is gleefully accepted and appreciated, I will replace it with a Conn 65x next year.

So as for Thomas? The high end models I feel were and still are pretty good. Growing up with a Conn Serenade as a child, I still think even the smaller Conn's sounded better due to all the independent tone generators. For fun and practice, I would take the Palace-III over any spinette (but still will be looking for a Conn 65x)

 
At home now: Wurlitzer 2 manual console connected to my own "Digital Pipes" with 32 audio channels

http://pstos.org/instruments/wa/seattle/lajko.htm

toodles:

 About 1976, Thomas organs got better--they even incorporated some custom designed LSI integrated circuits, rather a rare thing at the time. Others followed within a few years. Some of the later models have very decent sounds if you got up into their mid price range. Earlier than the mid 70's though, and they were pretty rough sounding except for the top models.  Thomas was owned by Warwick Electronics (not Whirlpool), although Whirlpool was a major stockholder in Warwick.

That brings back memories.  Warwick also owned Vox, of guitar amp and WahWah pedal fame.  They also produced organs (Thomas) for Sears and were sold under the Silvertone name.  And if you wanted to build your Thomas you could get one in kit form from HeathKit.  Heath and Whirlpool were located close.  Whirlpool employees enjoyed a discount on Thomas organs, and they bought them by the truck load during the hey day.  It was the bean counters at Whirlpool that pulled the plug though.  They saw the end coming and wasn't going down with the ship. 

Yes all models built after 1976 were all LSI based, and this avoided the previous problems with tone generators.  At that point organist Byron Melcher was head of product design, and they vastly improved.  HQ and R&D were in Chicago IL, (Lansing?), but they were built in Sepulveda CA.  At that point they were pretty reliable with some cleaver features on the mid to high-end models.   Two models, the Celebrity 871 and the Monticello had a Moog preset synthesizer which had some nice sounds.  These last models had much better sounding rhythm units thanks to op-amps and ROM's.  The whole product line was aimed at the home marked, like Lowry and Kimball. 

The whole industry eroded into products based on instant gratification and impulse buying.  The End. 

Perhaps if they were building musical instruments instead of consumer products they'd still be in business. 

 Cheers,

 Joe

www.V-Organ.com

"Thanks for the memories...", Bob Hope

 Has anyone done any revoicing of Thomas organs? I have the schematics of the Palace-III plus lots of extra parts (from a model 800, which is a Palace-III minus the solo manual:  keyboards, swell shoe, stop rail, Leslie, band-box) and a stop rail for a Trianon with all the voicing boards. The Trianon had a vox, which the Palace-III lacks.

Anyone have the schematic for the voicing part of a Trianon?

I could compare and probably revoice a stop on the solo of the Palace-III into a Vox and bleed it into the Leslie channel (which I can see was done on the Trianon by examining the stop rail wiring). (On thye Palace-III, Great and Accomp used old buss bar technology, where the solo used single contact keying like the Trianon). I've already found and added the contacts for orchestra bells and changed the crappy harpsichord on the great stop tab to control the real bells. I'd also like to remove one or both of the reverb tabs from the pedal and add another 16' and maybe an 8'. So any suggestions on revoicing?

It will get 3 sets of Conn pipes and a modern effects processor to do a true reverb. Overall, this organ (after thorough cleaning) looks great and sounds pretty darn good (except for the strings, and a couple reeds are still a little clarinet-ish) But flutes, tibias, diapasons and solo reeds are nice. Not bad for a $150 buy off of ebay! 

The very earliest Thomas organs were built in Joplin, Missouri. by Pacific-Mercury Electronics, a Caliornia based company.  These early models, starting maybe in late 50's or early 60's, used one half of a 12AU7 and one adjustable core coil to make every 3 or in some cases 2 notes., That is, a shared oscillator to reduce parts. Yes, very often they were out of tune with resistor pots for tuning for the additional notes of each oscillator. There were single keyboard versions and a chord organ. Very low cost was the intent, under $500. They worked but the sound was not so good. .The creator was Mr.Thomas George who, I think I recall, had a patent on this tone generator sharing trick, and hence the name of the organ company.

The adjacent notes sharing trick also showed up in other products over the years such as Baldwin's Fantomfingers apeggiator, to save electronics where you do not generally play certain adjacent keys.

Later  transistor Thomas organs were designed by Warwick Electronics in Liles, ILLINOIS, suburban Chicago and built at a factory in Southern California.. Warwick was a fairly large company that also designed and built all of the Sears radios and TV's until Sears switched to Sanyo in the late 70's. These transistor Thomas organs were 12 oscillator, binary-divider organs which were the standard design among most organs with exception of multiple oscillator organs such as Conn and Allen, etc.. Later Thomas's got fairly sophisticated. Warwick was maybe the first to use a VLSI rhythm generator chip and licensed the Moog Satellite and built their version into some of the Thomas models.

 I'd have to agree many of the early 70's Thomas organs were not good on quality control, but Hammond was also having production problems as well in the early 70's. I used to service Hammonds, Thomas, Baldwin, Gulbransen, etc, Many Hammonds arrived at the store DOA or doing wierd things. The classic Tonewheel Hammonds like B3, C3 which were made on Diversy Avenue had very few quality problems, but  the "electronic" and hybrid Hammonds,(Concord, T & H series  et al.) made in Franklin Park, were very often shoddy in production and had lots of design problems that were left to field techs to correct. the problems after shipment to dealers through tech notes. (They were good at supplying all the parts to do these) 

 Different organs over the years used either sawtooth (all harmonics) or square wave (odd harmonics). Tube Baldwins generated sawtooth, but used a circuit to generate a square wave from two octave related sawtooth notes to make the square wave odd harmonic series needed for stopped pipes and clarinet. Electro-Voice transistor organs also used this method. Most everyone used binary dividers, the most solid way at the time to do dividers, generating square waves, and in some cases, as in Baldwin adding a "staircase generator" which was a simple resistor network D to A converter, to create also a stepped  sawtooth wave along with the square wave. I think some Baldwins spinets were a 'stopped flute' made from square wave, and that may be some of the objection on small spinet Baldwins flute voicing.