A term used of certain types of Electronic organ that are not fully electronic. It is sometimes applied indiscriminately to all electronic and electric organs, or more accurately to those instruments that include either electroacoustic or electromechanical elements, in order to distinguish them from instruments in which the sound-generating system consists of electronic oscillators with no moving parts. Most precisely it describes only those electroacoustic organs, in which – like the electric guitar and electric piano – the acoustic sounds of the vibrating mechanism are reduced and made audible by means of special pickups or transducers; the sound sources have usually been free reeds, as in the reed organ. The most successful example was the Everett Orgatron (1934), on which the first Wurlitzer models were based; subsequent instruments include the Minshall-Estey (c1950) and several models marketed by Farfisa from the late 1950s. In the Orgatron and Wurlitzer electric organs the permanently vibrating brass reeds are enclosed in a case which prevents their being heard acoustically; the reeds form part of the instrument’s electrostatic transducers. Above each reed is a tone screw which may be adjusted to emphasize selected natural harmonics.
Until about 1930 the term ‘electric organ’ usually meant a pipe organ in which electricity powered part of the action; such instruments are now referred to as ‘organs with electric (or ‘electro-pneumatic’) action’.
A.L.M. Douglas: The Electronic Musical Instrument Manual: a Guide to Theory and Design (London, 1949/R), 56–7, 110–14
R.L. Eby: Electronic Organs: a Complete Catalogue, Textbook and Manual (Wheaton, IL, 1953), 157–80, 188–9, 194–5
R.H. Dorf: Electronic Musical Instruments (Mineola, NY, 1954, 2/1958), 128–41
HUGH DAVIES