Vintage Keyboards

If you came here looking for Moogs, ARPs, and Dave Smith (he's probably out fucking your mom) you came to the wrong page. If you want to learn about what other kinds of electronic keyboards are out there beyond synthesizers, this page will give you a good rundown of the good, the bad, and the heavy.

Electronic Organs
Organs come in a variety of configurations, tone generation, and quality. The smallest sizes are combo organs, and portable/stage organs. The next size up would be a chord organ, they typically have one manual (row of keys) and a set of chord buttons, they're generally not worth much, but they're fun if you find one for free. After that you have spinet organs. They have two offset manuals between 37 and 44 keys each, and an octave of bass pedals, they vary extremely in quality, even within the same manufacturer, they also tend to have built in drum machines. The largest organs are console organs, they will have two full manuals of 61 keys, at least two octaves of bass pedals, and will make roadies/bandmates want to kill you.

Hammond Organs
These are generally the highest revered, and for good reason. Laurens Hammond invented a special tone wheel generator (TWG) to generate pure sine waves by using a set of 91 toothed wheels with magnetic pickups for each wheel. This caused crosstalk between the pickups which arguably caused the unique tone of the Hammond organ, this also made them very heavy (but not fragile, most Hammonds from the 30's still work fine today). Another design oversight turned into a feature was that the key contacts would bridge causing a voltage spike for each key pressed, the much sought out key click was born. The last unique feature was percussion, which added a quick percussive addition of a 2nd or 3rd above the fundamental, which is a staple of the Hammond organ sound. Hammond organs still tended to sound boring and sterile, Laurens Hammond tried solving this after witnessing a special delay line at Bell Labs, a spring. He filed for a patent in 1939, and created the first musical spring reverb, which was included in certain Hammond tone cabinets.

Until now, we have only discussed half of what makes up the iconic Hammond organ sound. In the late 30's, a man named Donald Leslie was trying to make the Hammond organ sound as rich and vibrant as a pipe organ. He found that using a moving speaker was the best way to "fill the room with sound" and give it much more motion. When he approached Laurens Hammond with his new device, he was unsatisfied with the attempt to better his own organ, so he declined marketing it. Not only that, Hammond would begin to change speaker cabinet plugs to prevent the use of a Leslie speaker with Hammond organs. This did not hinder in any way the popularity of the Hammond and Leslie combo.

Buying a Hammond
When buying a Hammond organ, the number one concern is does it have a TWG? If it doesn't you can pass it up, because it will sound like every other home organ, at that point the word Hammond is just used to sell the thing. If it's a console Hammond, you're not likely going to need to worry about it, you just need to worry about getting a pickup truck and a strong friend. If it's a spinet sized Hammond, your options are limited to the M2/M3, L-100, and M-100, these can range from anywhere between $100 to $500 a piece, any more and you're being scammed. If you're careful, you can probably fit one in an SUV or a Minivan. If you have the cajones to buy a console sized Hammond, a B3 is going to set you back $2000 minimum, but I've seen them reach $5000 here in the Midwest (the home of electronic organs). A more reasonable choice would be to find an A-100, which has an amp with reverb built in, these are a bit bulkier than a B3, but they can be had for as low as $500.

Other consoles and spinets
The 70s saw an extreme saturation of the home organ market. That said, there's an immeasurable fuckton of garbage organs out there that people think are still worth something just because it has a built-in leslie. If you can find a non-Hammond console organ out there, it's worth a try, but not always worth it to buy. Lowrey made a good number of organs, their consoles were usually very good stuff, but their spinets tended to be bad until the home organ market went bust in the 80s and they needed to up their game to stay afloat. Wurlitzer is very much the same, their upscale consoles tended to be better instruments, but their spinet organs were utter crap. Remember when buying an old organ that isn't a Hammond, the closest price to free is the best price.

Now you may be thinking, how the hell am I going to find a good spinet organ when there's no Hammonds around? The answer to that is Yamaha. In the 70s and 80s, Yamaha had no problem keeping up with the competition as they tended to lead most innovations in organ technology. In the early 70s they had begun placing monophonic synthesizers with aftertouch in spinet organs, and polyphonic synthesizers in their console organs by the end of the 70s. Most models included a full compliment of flute voices and percussion tabs to get similar sounds to Hammond organs. They also created a number of FM synthesis based organs, and were the first to pioneer sampled instruments in home organs.

Combo Organs
Also known as transistor organs and top-octave divider organs, they created sound by generating the highest octave with transistor oscillators, and divided the frequencies to get the lower octaves. They tend to have thinner, reedier types of sounds, though some were intended to replicate the sound of Hammond organs. A major component of these organs is true frequency vibrato, which is impossible for a Hammond organ. This gives them a wilder sound often used to great effect. Nearly every 60's band used them at some point, if not for their portability compared to a Hammond, then for their unique sounds. This came at a price however, later combo organs tended to be made with poorer quality, and suffered breakdowns from heavy use, typically broken keys. These days they're a bit more hard to find, many baby boomers identify with the era, so they're a hard one to pry from their hands. If you can find them, single manual combos like a Farfisa Compact or VIP or a Vox Continental will run $500 minimum, dual manuals like the Compact Duo or Super Continental will fetch prices past $800.

Electric Pianos
Electric piano is the same basic concept as an electric guitar, take a paino, add pickups, and voila! You have an electric piano. This usually isn't the case though. Though there are electrified pianos with strings and all, the most common and revered models have their own unique generators. Let's begin with a little history of the electric piano we know and love.

Fender Rhodes electric piano
In an attempt to help WWII soldiers through therapy, Harold Rhodes taught them to play piano. Unable to find enough acoustic pianos, he designed a device that could be made with surplus army parts. The sound was created by the hammers hitting tines, which are basically a tuned metal bar for each key, and amplified with electromagnetic pickups. It was named the "Pre-Piano" It was very simple and only 3 octaves, but it was successful enough that many people took it on as a teaching tool. In 1959, he started a joint venture with Leo Fender to come up with a new model. Fender did not like the higher registers of the Pre-Piano, so he opted to make a Piano Bass. This was the basis for later Rhodes piano models, as it had the classic tolex bottom, with fiberglass top. The fiberglass was provided by a boat manufacturer, so they used whatever colors were supplied, often the vibrant kind you'd only find on a boat. Fender was bought by CBS in 1965 which allowed Rhodes to come out with his Fender Rhodes Piano, which had 73 keys. From there they proceeded to make a number of other models and revisions, including an unsuccessful version with a limited polysynth built in, and another very reliable model that had a midi out option, the MK V, which Chick Corea would use in combination with a Yamaha TX-816 synthesizer to create a very full electric piano sound spread across the stereo field.

Just like Hammond organs are best mated with a Leslie, the Fender Rhodes has an amp that pairs well with it. Thankfully no effort was made to use special plugs to make integration more difficult, and it wasn't an expensive rotating speaker. It was the classic Fender Twin Reverb.

Wurlitzer electric piano
Of course, the free market couldn't leave only one option for electric pianos. In the 30's Benjamin Miessner invented an amplified acoustic piano that used electrostatic pickups as opposed to electromagnetic pickups. In 1954 Wurlitzer decided to use the pickup design and replaced it with steel reeds. It created a more hollow and mellow sound compared to the Rhodes. As the musician played it harder, it distorted slightly, giving it a grittier sound. The Wurlitzer had a certain issue the Rhodes didn't need to face, tuning. With the Rhodes, the tines were larger pieces of steel that held tuning well, but the reeds on the Wurlitzer wore down with use, and needed to be tuned by adding bits of solder to each reed to bring it sharper than it needed to be, and then it would be filed down to flatten it to the correct pitch.

Buying an electric piano
There's tons of variations of Rhodes and Wurlys you can find, and with varying prices to go with each model. Some have built in amps, some have no legs and torn tolex and some just don't work. The best advice I can give is that $350 is the max for needing repairs, $500 is what you should pay for less than ideal condition but still playable, and $800 is fine for good condition but slightly battle worn. If you're paying more than $1000, it better be pristine, tuned (not just pitch wise, but action and electronics too), and if it's a Rhodes, should have a built in amp.

Electric Grand Pianos
These are odd beasts. Not fully an acoustic piano, but certainly not like an electric piano either. It's basically an acoustic piano stuffed into a road case and made to take on the road. Sometimes you can find older acoustic pianos with pickups installed, but those are more of a one off. In this case, we're discussing acoustic pianos made to be electric. They can still be heard when turned off, but are best sounding amplified.

The most notable examples would be Yamaha's CP-70 and CP-80, with 73 and 88 keys respectively. A bit unstable in tuning, but when combined with a nice chorus, it's all part of the charm. They break down into two sections, the key mechanism and the harp section, for "easy" lifting. Each piece is still around 150 lbs. They both feature balanced and line outs, both with the same signal unless you turn tremolo on, which actually pans the signal between the two outputs. They feature a basic 3 band EQ, and on some CP-80s, a graphic EQ. There are also the CP-70m and the CP-80m which has the graphic EQ, and a midi output. The last in this lineup was the CP-60, which was an upright version that also broke down, though not many people took them on the road anyways. It too, had a midi enabled variant.

Another company in the electric grand business was Helpinstill. They produced the Roadmaster 88 and 64 (you guessed it, 88 and 64 keys each) upright pianos, which folded the keys down into one piece. Helpinstill was already known for their piano pickups, so these models are not exactly hen's teeth. What is a bit rare is the Helpinstill Portable Grand, which is quite a bit more grand looking than the Yamaha models.

Lastly, Kawai entered the game with the EP 308 electric grand, which looked like they tried to make something even goofier looking than the Yamaha CP-80. They also came out with the EP 608 electric upright, which looks like they tried to out goofy their own EP 308. Still fine instruments in their own rights.

If you can find any of these instruments, I stress that you do not pay above $1000, unless it's in very pristine condition and has midi. Even then, you should max your budget at $1200.

Electronic Pianos
Electronic pianos were the budget alternative to electric pianos, instead of using a physical tone generator of some sort, then using a pick-up system, instead they rely on analog circuitry to generate tones. Similar to a top octave divider organ, they may use a single octave of oscillators that are divided down. There are other designs that call for an entire bank of oscillators, one for every key, or a special type of voice allocation system not unlike early polyphonic synthesizers. Common to all types, they have their own envelope generator for every note played, triggering like you'd expect them to, instead of like a string machine or Hammond percussion (fully polyphonic as opposed to paraphonic). These tend to sound neither close to a real piano, nor do they sound too similar to an electric piano, that said, they tend to have a certain charm, and can be used to some success. Unlike electric pianos, they typically had harpsichord settings that were quite usable, and hard to get without an actual plucked clavier. They also have the benefit of being increasingly cheap and are lighter than electric alternatives, though still on the heavy side.

Common models include:

RMI Electra Piano 300/368, which lacked velocity, but boasted an organ mode that extended the release times. It was heavily used by Genesis and Yes

Yamaha CP-20/25/30/35, which featured velocity sensitivity on a quite nice keybed, the 30 and 35 models had two tone generator sections that could be detuned individually. The 25 and 35 were upgrades of the 20 and 30 which added more waveforms and flanger. The case of the 30/35 became the legs, the 20/25 simply had screw on legs stored in the lid.

Crumar Roadrunner/Roadracer/Roady/Compac, these were pretty low budget, but low weight and sized instruments. They were better at vibe type sounds than the plucked and struck sounds electronic pianos are known for. The only model with velocity sensitivity was the Roadracer.

Kustom 88, the only 88 key electronic piano well known. This means it's quite huge and heavy, but the action is nice. It's got a respectable tone for being an electronic piano, best around the bass range. The case becomes the stand, setup would be a breeze if it wasn't so heavy.

ARP 4/16-voice (later Rhodes Electronic Piano, after CBS bought ARP), which had velocity sensitivity, but it only controlled volume, not timbre. The number of voices did not denote how many notes can be played, but how many presets were on the instrument. They were still fully polyphonic on all 73 keys.

You shouldn't have to pay any more than $150 for any of these but the RMI (because collectors are assholes). But always shoot lower than what you're aiming for.

Clavs
Well you really have only one option here. The Hohner Clavinet. Clavinets are basically an electrified clavichord, which was a predecessor to the fortepiano. Instead of a hammer hitting the strings, and responding to the touch of the musician, the keys were simply plucked upon pressing the keys, and dampened on the release. This gave it a sharper attack but no dynamic control. The electrified clavinets were often used with a volume pedal to compensate for this. Since they used similar pickups and strings to electric guitars, the tone was similar, and tended to make people think that they were a guitar in recordings.

Hohner started with the Clavinet L in 1968, which had reverse colored keys (like any classical clav), a triangular wooden body, a clear music stand, and a built in speaker. It was intended as a home instrument for european folk and classical music.

The Clavinet C was the model famously used on Stevie Wonder's Superstition, and it was multi tracked up to 6 times. It had a unique dual pickup system that involved some clever switching. There were two switches, one for A or B, and another for C or D. Selecting A and C would output only the Treble pickup, B and C for only the Rhythm pickup, A and D for both pickups in phase, and B and D for both pickups out of phase.

The most well known and revered model was the Clavinet D6. It's the version heard on nearly any funk record of the 70s. It took the Clavinet C and added a nice wooden finish, and 4 switches to turn on 4 band pass filters covering the range of the instrument, leaving them all off silenced the instrument. Most left them all on.

An interesting "feature" of the instrument was it's ability to feedback. It is the only known keyboard to do so, due to it's use of acoustic strings. It can be controlled by only playing the keys you want it to feed back, as releasing the keys keeps them dampened.

The going rate for these tends to hover around $1000, but good luck finding them, most owners cling to them for dear life.