No, It's a Guitar-No it's not-Yes It Is

[Dennisthe Menace]

[TerryTNM]

Quite an invention for the times. The execution of it was poorly engineered.

I remember trying to work on these instruments when at VOX. They were constantly coming back for organ tuning problems. I was probably the wrong person to try and fix them. It was an electronics problem with a note system that required extremely accurate resistors in series to generate the individual notes. Example: If you keyed say the A note on the 5th fret of the 1st string all the previous notes E F F# G Ab resistors had to be dead on. As I remember it, It was a subtractive process. The sum total of all the resistors in series created the highest note for that string. The problem was the resistors were never accurate enough to maintain the tuning even though they were using gold band resistors.

I think we had a thread about this before.

Terry

[MWaldorf]

That's really interesting Terry, I had never realized how they managed the organ tones. A creative idea, but probably near impossible to execute reliably.

[Sarah93003]

Wouldn't that be a "Guitorgan" or "Guitargan"?

[Mr. Bill]

I'm really surprised to hear that they used some sort of series string of resistors for the note generation. I would think that any added resistance from fret or string oxidation would make tuning quite difficult.

I always assumed that the fret board/string connections were used like the organ keys on a Continental, just completing audio mixing circuits.

By the way, the player in the above video is Dick Denny, the original designer of the AC15 and AC30 amp lines.

[Dennisthe Menace]

Wouldn't that be a "Guitorgan" or "Guitargan"?

Nope, that's still a different one. The Guitorgan was from Musiconics Int'l (MCI) invented by Rob Merrel(?) or Murell in the late 60s. The VOX was simply the Guitar Organ .

[TerryTNM]

I'm really surprised to hear that they used some sort of series string of resistors for the note generation. I would think that any added resistance from fret or string oxidation would make tuning quite difficult.

I always assumed that the fret board/string connections were used like the organ keys on a Continental, just completing audio mixing circuits.

It was really a nightmare. Possibly miniaturization was not yet to a point where they could have 11 tone generator boards inside the guitar for each note as the Continental had. I don't recall any that came in for repair of that nature were ever fixed and returned.

[jfine]

That's a great clip! I remember seeing the Guitar-Organ in Vox catalogs back in the '60's, but this is the first time I've ever heard one played. (Do any of the surviving ones still work?) No wonder they didn't sell--there weren't too many guitarists using two-handed fretboard tapping back then! Maybe Jimmie Webster with Gretsch...And how about Steve Allen's reaction to the repeat-percussion feature! "It's strumming itself!" I remember trying a Vox guitar in the late-'60's that had all sorts of electronic gizmos built in--fuzz, bass and treble boost, a goofy palm-operated wah-wah, and the aforementioned repeat-percussion (basically a choppy tremolo that shut the sound all the way off). What a gimmicky piece of junk that thing was. The guitar that killed Vox...And, remember, Steve Allen hated rock 'n' roll--he would recite rock 'n' roll lyrics as if they were Shakespeare in order to show how inane he thought they were. Little Richard set him straight by singing, "Awop bop a-loobop, awop bam boom!" in rhythm, which Steve was leaving out!

[Veenture]

Great little story Jon!