 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2022) |
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| Industry | Musical instrument manufacturer |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1875 |
| Products | Digital keyboards; originally a manufacturer of electronic organs for the home |
The Thomas Organ Company is an American manufacturer of electronic keyboards and a one-time holder of the manufacturing rights to the Moog synthesizer. The company was a force behind early electronic organs for the home. It went out of business in 1979 but reopened in 1996.
Founded by Canadian Edward G. Thomas as the "Thomas Organ & Piano Co." in Woodstock, Ontario in 1875, the company's first instruments were pipe organs, moving later to pump organs. In the early 1950s, Thomas George invented the Thomas electronic organ with its single manual and ten stops. Thomas reorganized the company in 1956 into the Thomas Organ Company of Sepulveda, California.
Unlike later electronic organs with conventional tab stops, early Thomas electronic organs utilized a dial control for their stops, presumably to add a certain familiarity to its users since the dials worked much like those on a radio or television. This may be evidenced by the introduction of the Talking Organ with its "Built-In Teacher," a phonograph intended for use with instructional recordings.
The 1960s had the Thomas Organ Company at the height of its popularity. The company became the importer of the English-made Vox combo, the electronics of which would turn up in Thomas models. Thomas also took over manufacturing rights of the Moog synthesizer and enjoyed heavy celebrity endorsement from the likes of Lawrence Welk, whose organist Bob Ralston both played a Thomas on The Lawrence Welk Show and on tour at organ and piano shops to demonstrate the greatly improved tonal quality of the new models, and Lucille Ball, who featured a Thomas on at least one episode of The Lucy Show . Welk had a high-end model named after him in 1968, the aforementioned Lawrence Welk spinet model.
Joe Benaron was President of Thomas during its heyday. Ennio Unchini was the Italian importer.
Like most American furniture of the 1950s, early electronic organs were massive affairs; indeed, the company's largest market was the home market. Thomas' introduction of the "streamlined" console and the introduction of solid state electronics made Thomas the preeminent manufacturer of home organs. That latter introduction to the Thomas line led to developments much like those found of synthesizers of later years; one later version, the 1973 Monticello, actually incorporated a synthesizer in its upper manual which actually was a Moog synthesizer. It was found on the MONTICELLO Models 371 & 372 and also on the CELEBRITY Model 871.
Another innovation during its heyday was Color-Glo, an instructional system which illuminated the keys of the manuals (and therefore their corresponding notes in reverse relief) from behind with fluorescent lights. The lower manual had black, green, and red colored bands behind the notes necessary to play a second-inversion C, a first-inversion F and a root-position G. The C, F and G pedals had colored bands across their tips corresponding to the chords. The idea was that a rank beginner could create music simply by following the very simple music books that featured lettered noteheads and color-coded chords. "Matching the colors" was sufficient to play full-sounding four-voice chords.
Thomas's three-volume course Color-Glo Plus: A Sound For Everyone introduced "three simple rules" that allowed for more chords, by changing the pedal notes and/or specifying a manual note to raise or lower. The chord's letter name indicated the pedal to play, while as before, the color-coding specified the basic C, F, or G chord shape on the lower manual. Note name stickers were provided for the pedals. These extended rules allowed for chords such as (black) Am7, +A7, and −Cm; (green) Dm7, +D7, and −Fm; and (red) Em7, +E7, and -Gm. The height of any + or - before the chord symbol showed which note to raise or lower.
These features and others were incorporated across the product line throughout the 1960s, including small, relatively inexpensive spinet models with 37-note manuals (the AR1) and a unique "arc" 13-note pedal board, another Thomas Organ innovation, although one which was too narrow to allow true heel-toe playing. Thomas however did lengthen the pedals to enable theoretically at least heel and toe playing. Especially remarkable was the fact that the spinets started around US$500. Larger models included the Concert Serenade and the Lawrence Welk , each with two 44-note manuals and a 25-note pedal board. Larger still were the Celebrity with two 61-note manuals and a 32-note pedal board (revised to a 25-note version in later editions), the American Guild of Organists-compliant Impresario theatre organ, the Model 710 church organ and the Model 900-series 3-manual theatre organ.
Popular kit versions were made available via Heathkit and fully assembled versions under the Silvertone brand were sold by Sears, Roebuck and Company.
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated sound by creating an electric current from rotating a metal tonewheel near an electromagnetic pickup, and then strengthening the signal with an amplifier to drive a speaker cabinet. The organ is commonly used with the Leslie speaker.
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine, plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or, on electric and electronic keyboards, completing a circuit. Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard.
In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions or other means for producing tones. The organs have usually two or three, up to five manuals, for playing with the hands, and pedalboard, with the feet. With the use of registers, several groups of pipes can be connected to one manual.
Bassline is the term used in many styles of music, such as blues, jazz, funk, dub and electronic, traditional, or classical music for the low-pitched instrumental part or line played by a rhythm section instrument such as the electric bass, double bass, cello, tuba or keyboard.
A rhythm section is a group of musicians within a music ensemble or band that provides the underlying rhythm, harmony and pulse of the accompaniment, providing a rhythmic and harmonic reference and "beat" for the rest of the band. The rhythm section is often contrasted with the roles of other musicians in the band, such as the lead guitarist or lead vocals whose primary job is to carry the melody.
Farfisa is a manufacturer of electronics based in Osimo, Italy, founded in 1946. The company manufactured a series of compact electronic organs in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Compact, FAST, Professional and VIP ranges, and later, a series of other keyboard instruments. They were used by a number of popular musicians including Sam the Sham, Pink Floyd, Sly Stone, Blondie, and the B-52s.
An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed into several types of instruments:
A pedalboard is a keyboard played with the feet that is usually used to produce the low-pitched bass line of a piece of music. A pedalboard has long, narrow lever-style keys laid out in the same semitone scalar pattern as a manual keyboard, with longer keys for C, D, E, F, G, A and B, and shorter, raised keys for C♯, D♯, F♯, G♯ and A♯. Training in pedal technique is part of standard organ pedagogy in church music and art music.
Guitar Organ or GuitOrgan is a type of electric guitar with electronic organ components added, developed by Jennings Musical Industry as Vox Guitar Organ at latest in 1965. Similar instrument, GuitOrgan was developed by Murrell Electronics, circa 1967. On this type of instruments, each guitar fret is separated into six segments, creating independent contact switches for each string. The organ notes are keyed when a string touches a specific segment. An expression pedal is used to fade the organ sound in and out, while the guitar can be played at the same time.
A manual is a musical keyboard designed to be played with the hands, on an instrument such as a pipe organ, harpsichord, clavichord, electronic organ, melodica, or synthesizer. The term "manual" is used with regard to any hand keyboard on these instruments to distinguish it from the pedalboard, which is a keyboard that the organist plays with their feet. It is proper to use "manual" rather than "keyboard", then, when referring to the hand keyboards on any instrument that has a pedalboard.
Bass pedals are an electronic musical instrument with a foot-operated pedal keyboard with a range of one or more octaves. The earliest bass pedals from the 1970s consisted of a pedalboard and analog synthesizer tone generation circuitry packaged together as a unit. The bass pedals are plugged into a bass amplifier or PA system so that their sound can be heard. Since the 1990s, bass pedals are usually MIDI controllers, which have to be connected to a MIDI-compatible computer, electronic synthesizer keyboard, or synth module to produce musical tones. Some 2010s-era bass pedals have both an onboard synth module and a MIDI output.
An expression pedal is an important control found on many musical instruments including organs, electronic keyboards, and pedal steel guitar. The musician uses the pedal to control different aspects of the sound, commonly volume. Separate expression pedals can often be added to a guitar amplifier or effects unit and used to control many different aspects of the tone.
Chord organ is a kind of home organ that has a single short keyboard and a set of chord buttons, enabling the musician to play a melody or lead with one hand and accompanying chords with the other, like the accordion with a set of chord buttons which was originated from a patent by Cyrill Demian in 1829, etc.
Rocky Mount Instruments (RMI) was a subsidiary of the Allen Organ Company, based in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, active from 1966 to 1982. The company was formed to produce portable musical instruments, and manufactured several electronic pianos, harpsichords, and organs that used oscillators to create sound, instead of mechanical components like an electric piano.
The Vox Continental is a transistorised combo organ that was manufactured between 1962 and 1971 by the British musical equipment manufacturer Vox. It was designed for touring musicians and as an alternative to the heavy Hammond organ. It supports drawbars in a similar manner to the Hammond, and has distinctive reverse-coloured keys. The sound is generated by a series of oscillators, using a frequency divider to span multiple octaves.
A combo organ, so-named and classified by popular culture due to its original intended use by small, touring jazz, pop and dance groups known as "combo bands", as well as some models having "Combo" as part of their brand or model names, is an electronic organ of the frequency divider type, generally produced between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. This type of organ predated, and contributed largely to, the development of modern synthesizers. The combo organ concept, at least in the context of mass-production, is thought to have arisen from popular demand, when smaller home organs were seen in music stores. Combo organs were probably originally developed in the United Kingdom, based on the Univox polyphonic version of the Clavioline, and some models included the inner-workings of Italian-made transistor accordions. They were the brainchild of necessity for portable organs of simple design, mainly for use in these small groups. Combo organs ended up having a major impact on the music scene of the mid- and late 1960s, particularly on rock and roll of that era.
The Gibson G-101 is a transistorised combo organ, manufactured in the late 1960s by the Lowrey Organ Company for Gibson.
The Lowrey organ is an electronic organ named after its developer, Frederick C. Lowrey (1871–1955), a Chicago-based industrialist and entrepreneur. Lowrey's first commercially successful full-sized electronic organ, the Model S Spinet or Berkshire came to market in 1955, the year of his death. Lowrey had earlier developed an attachment for a piano, adding electronic organ stops on 60 notes while keeping the piano functionality, called the Organo, first marketed in 1949 as a very successful competitor to the Hammond Solovox.
RIHA Adagio is a Dutch electronic organ with a built-in Leslie speaker and a fine wood finish. Similar to other RIHA organs, the Adagio was made by Benelux Musical Instruments, The Hague, the Netherlands. A fine member of those line of all-transistor Dutch organs that featured eight models in three console finishes - walnut, teak, and rosewood. All of them have standard features, including, but not limited to, pedal volume control, brilliance control, and reverberation. The Adagio is one of the once popular RIHA models, along with the Festivo, the Andante, and the Allegro.
A digital accordion is an electronic musical instrument that uses the control features of a traditional accordion to trigger a digital sound module that produces synthesized or digitally sampled accordion sounds or, in most instruments, a range of non-accordion sounds, such as orchestral instruments, pipe organ, piano, guitar, and so on. Digital accordions typically encode and transmit key presses and other input as Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) messages. Most digital accordions need to be plugged into a keyboard amplifier or PA system to hear their sounds.
CDX-0652A dual-manual combo organ with a Moog Satellite grafted onto it. ... / Thomas bought the rights to the Satellite from Moog. The CDX-0652 was designed by Thomas in cooperation with Cordovox. A Thomas version of the Satellite (the "Synthi 1055) and the CDX-0652 were both manufactured by EME, the same outfit that made most Italian Vox organs. Thomas also marketed the Satellite under the "Orbit" name on some of their home organs. / The synthesizer voices play only on the upper manual, organ voices play on both. Organ and synth voices may be played simultaneously on the upper manual. It includes a batch of 9 preset synthesizer voices that don't appear on a Satellite. Unlike the 0642, this one seems to have all of the organ features (many of which seem identical to the 0642) available on both keyboards.
With the incorporation of Jennings Musical Instruments in 1957, discussions leading to a collaborative venture between JMI, the Thomas Organ Company, an American manufacturer of primarily church organs, and Eko, an Italian manufacturer of electronic organs, also began. This joint venture was not formalized until the early 1960s, emerging as EME (Elettronica Musicale Europea), and resulted in the establishment of a subsequent factory in Portofino, Italy. EME remained the primary manufacturer or electronic organs in Italy throughout the latter half of the 1960s, producing many instruments under the Vox and Eko brands, including the former's Super Continental and Continental Baroque models; the factory ceased operations on Vox instruments in 1978. In 1970, Ennio Uncini, a former president of EME, would go on to establish the Jen brand of synthesizers and organs in Pesacara, Italy.
