I'm in Chicago. My best friend's father worked at Lowery. He apparently built organs. When he retired he purchased and kept at home a top of the line modern Lowery that would fit in his small home. When the old man was downsizing his life, they tried to give me the Lowery. Nobody wanted it. It was decades ago and Chicagoans only wanted Hammond organs at that time. Many wonderful Lowery organs were overlooked and abandoned in those decades. Too bad we were not more open to these units. Thanks for the video.
I am in awe of your ambition. I couldn't imagine the amount of work it took to replace all the bad components, clean all those contacts and come up with new-builds to replace the parts that had failed. That was a huge undertaking. The sound, though, is really pretty spectacular. Lowreys have a sound all their own.
What huge amount of dedication put into to bring back life into this organ! I'm sure at the end that Heritage Deluxe will become a premium legacy; thanks for providing a glimpse at this project including the live play at the end :-)!
Louisa has such a wonderful voice ❤. I'd love to be your next door neighbor and play a ton of music with you both. Influence of the day : Ennio Morricone (can't stop whistle on the good, the bad and the ugly) and François de Roubaix.
Many later organs used the Texas Instruments SAJ 101 chip for’ if I am correct, master octave and divide down functions. Being quite early chips these are however prone to internal rust. So being able to work out and assemble an alternative circuit on a board is actually quite a lifesaver. For which I salute you. 👍👍👍👍
I have a DSO-1 that I've repaired so many times, I know exactly what you meant when you said its all you could think about for two weeks. Its painstaking, and there isn't much help available anywhere (and I have an original service manual!) I recently acquired a Lincolnwood SSO-25, which is the full-size big brother to the DSO-1. I'm not sure if they were ever available in the UK, but if you really want to torture yourself its a real gem.
Hearing the beautiful sounds available from this instrument, I can fully appreciate why you have gone to so much trouble to refurbish it. More sounds, please. And they should have built it with a glass top with all the neon lamps on view.
Your level of dedication is amazing , I found some ELKA and Hammond Farfisa organ synths in Hampshire a few years back , and got them all running again , sadly space is limiting so they had to go .
This story reminds me of my project converting the Leslie Pro Line 900 to have dual speed on the bass buffer part. I haven't ate, drank either slept nor changed cloths for quite a few days
Amazing work! I’m in awe of what you’ve achieved with your Heritage. Mine has some similar issues, but I’m reduced to a lightly quivering blancmange even peering inside the back of mine. 400v, a lack of expertise and being geriatric doesn’t help, so more on the DSO-1 to help the slightly bewildered please 🙏
I am putting together some info and guides, showing all of the fixes I did to my DSO-1 - when I have finished it, it’ll be available via our patreon page- hopefully within the next month
I once again hope you can record your musings properly, the piece at the end was lovely. I wonder what music fireflies would make with that amount of wires and values attached? Good well x
I have that exact popping issue on my farfisa vip 500. I narrowed it down to the trigger pulse for the piano voice. Its the only thing I have left to fix. When and if I ever get around to fixing it that is.
What do the neon bulbs do? Beyond looking pretty, are they paired with LDRs and used to shape each note, allowing for polyphonic sustain. Or, do they simply attenuate or smooth signals/voltages somehow?
When you'll finish with all the repairs please contact some software house to made a vst version of it (or a kontakt library). It's an historycal instrument used by The Beatles, The Who and Joe Meek but it's incredibily rare and there aren't virtual emulations of it!
