SOT and old organ with a leslie in it... worthless?

[Brian Marshall]

anyone ever run in to an old Swinger/kimbal organ... or know anything about them

my friend was going to take it to goodwill.... he's not a musician... a relative gave it to him... his kids have been beating on it for a couple years.  its about 300lbs, and some of the switches and keys dont work very well.  I figure just dirty contacts.  its a swinger 2000

it has a leslie in it.... i figure that on its own is worth something....

I told him to hold on to it for a while and i'd see if i could find out if its worth anything either on its own or for parts

[toneman]

it's probably vauable 2 a Kimble collector.
Have U googled??
If it uses Top Octave Divider chips, some of the individual chips
are worth a small fortune....... :shock:
I know the MOSTek MK50240 goes 4 about 60bucks now.
Originally, it sold 4 $12.

[Brian Marshall]

i dont know exaclty what is in it..

little info on google on this model in preticular.

There is a crap load of circuit boards in it, many of which look similar or identical.... i suppose they are all oscilators... but dont really know.

i didnt see any ic's, but i did see a few epoxy or plasic case tranys with no markings except EBC.  lots of huge film caps... paper caps... a few cermics.  I saw no IC's which leads me to believe that its pretty old...   early 70's maybe?

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Some organs are completely full of germanium transistors. Don't ask me how I know this :wink:
Anything with an actual Leslie has to be worth something to someone. If it has a bass keyboard section, that part is useful to DIY guys. Once all these old organs are trashed, they are going to be worth somethng, like analog synths were..

[jayp5150]

Just my .02

Even if you find out it's relativley worthless (you know, relative to a Hammond, for instance), I would at least pirate the Leslie guts and re-cabinet them.  That would be sweet.

Of course, that's if you can find it in yourself to hack an old organ--I might not be able to myself, unless it was trashed.

Let us know what happens, please.

[Mark Hammer]

The little Leslies that come in these organs are sweet.  You will most likely need a separate amplifier to drive it, and will have to build a cab for it, but they sound great with guitar.

The keyboards can be easily adapted to synth purposes.  The availability of simple one-board synth packages like the "Farm 921" (http://www.aleph.co.jp/~takeda/radio/OneBoardFarm.html), the Sound Lab (http://www.musicfromouterspace.com/analogsynth/SOUNDLABMINISYNTH/soundlab.html), the various projects Tom Gamble has at his site (http://www.ele4music.com/index.html), or the PAiA Fatman, has made synth production a breeze.

[toneman]

Mark,
nice link 4 the "FarmSynth"
had not seen that B4.
thanx....
BTW, i still have my Gnome & OZ  

Brian,  can U get some jpgs of the Kimbal??
Like others have said,
the keyboard, & and bass pedals are probably reusable.
I see organ bass pedals on ebay lots of times.
Does it have a tube amp???
I C organ tube amps on ebay also.
The rotating speaker thing, would B Kewl...
Leslie is a trademark name...so it's probably not an *actual* Leslie.
So, allinall, if U want 2 part it out, "recycle" it so2speak,
I'm sure U could find multiple homes 4 the parts.
U have 2 ask yourself:  do U feel lucky??
No, really...Is it worth your time??
Then, there's the 300LB issue............:shock: