Anyone remember this ??

[Nullifier]

I'm thinking this organ was a Lowery that I played a few times in a music store in Atlanta. It's been a long time since I saw one.

It was a classic organ and had a rather nice pipey sound for those years. The salesman, who was very kind, explained that Lowery had done some experimental design of a tone-wheel organ that used information from a film or celluloid material on a spinning wheel similar to the Hammond organ but the wheels weren't adjustable. Hammond took Lowery to court and forced them to drop the concept after Lowery had sold a few organs, or so I was told.

The only reason I didn't purchase that organ was I felt that after a few years the celluloid would deteriorate and there would be no replacments available.

Anyone ever see or play one?? I think these organs were a bit ahead of their time in the sounds reproduced after looking for another practice organ recently and listening to the old Allens and Rodgers I've heardheard.

Al

[Nullifier]

Nobody?? Hmmm.....now I'm starting to feel "special".[]

[geoelectro]

That would be an optical generator system. Both Kimball and Baldwin had them but I never saw one from Lowrey. The Optigon was an inexpensive organ based on an optical system but with replaceable discs. I believe the Chamberlin was another optical system keyboard.

With an optical track, you can draw a very precise waveform and reproduce the sound exactly.

I serviced a Baldwin once that had half of the stops out. I discovered it had two optical generators and one of them had a burned out light bulb!

Geoelectro