What to do with....

[digi2t]

a Farfisa organ. That's right, you heard correctly. My work buddy and I were driving back to the shop this afternoon, and just before the main gate, we have to go through a mobile home park. In one of the windows my buddy spots a sign, "ORGAN TO GIVE AWAY". He points it out to me, and we pull over. I go up to the house, knock on the door, and I'm shown something very close to one of these (sorry, no pic of the actual unit);



Since we've got the van, I figure, "Transport? No problemo.". Next I figure, "There should be a crapload of 1970's transistors, and other goodies in this thing. Perfect!". I take it. We get it into the shop, and I pop the back off. Sure enough, lots of cool looking transistors and stuff...

But...

What I wasn't expecting, is that there is a Leslie in this thing. That floored me. Three 12" speakers, two of which provide the main sound output, and the third faces a rotating drum, which is run by a motor and belt. And it works!

So, quick show of hands here. Not being a keyboard player, do I scavenge what I can here, and ditch the rest? Or, is this puppy worth something? Personally, I'm ready to tear out all the boards, and the Leslie of course, and ditch it, but I figured maybe someone here knows better.

A Leslie.... man!

[Puguglybonehead]

What to do with a Farfisa?!? Hmmm... every early B52s song that ya like. They do a mean Telstar too. Is it worth anything? If it's restored to working condition, it's right up there with a late 50's Les Paul or Strat. Probably worth as much as a vintage Moog or Sequential Circuits. Please, don't cannibalize it! Restore it, or find someone who can.

[Mark Hammer]

I picked one up about 25 years ago.  Not the same model, but it was a dual-keyboard Farfisa.

1) Emptied of its guts, it made a terrific workbench.  The wooden frame was such that nothing ever had a chance to roll off onto the floor.  Saved me a bundle in diodes!! 

2) If you've never played through a Leslie, you owe it to yourself.  Imagine going through life without ever tasting chocolate, or engaging in certain, um, "intimate activities", or ever leaving your town limits.  That's what it's like for a guitar player to have never used a rotating speaker.

3) The volume pedal is a great expression controller for things like your Ludwig unit or similar.

4) There are many terrific single-board mono analog synth designs out there that would love to be married to one of those keyboards, starting with the various MFOS synth-lab units, Motohiko Takeda's Farm 921 design, and Tom Gamble's various older designs.  Or you can use it as an excuse to go modular.

5) Those bass pedals would make for a great encoded footswitching system.

6) There's probably more wire in there than you'll ever use.

7) Those great big honking pots are great.

[digi2t]

Mark, I took your advise.

1) It's going to make a nice parlour desk for my buddy.

2) The Leslie is boxed, and in a safe place, awaiting time to play with it. I'll have to hit my dad's workshop though, and build a case for it.

3) Volume pedal could be useful, even if it is made out of plastic. Kept it.

4) Not interested in the keys. Ditched them.

5) Already have a crapload of MIDI controllers, don't need more. Gone.

6) Check on the wire brother! Can rewire a small town.

7) Check on the pots. Saved.

I was surprised at how many BC209 (B and C) trannies are in there. LOTS!! Tons of diodes as well. Tons of great looking caps, and even inductors. I think I have to reserve a couple of weeks to comb through all the stock on these boards.

The real surprise was the "play along" cassette player that was integrated into this thing. I broke it open, and lo and behold, I've got a few 2SB22's, 2SA202, 2SB303, 2SB186's, 2SD186, 2SB405, and two friendly looking Ge diodes. YEAH BABY!

Don't abuse... reuse! 

[joelindsey]

What year/model is it? Does it work? As far as I know, Farfisa stopped using transistors in the oscillator and dividing circuitry in the early 70's and used IC's instead. At least that's what I have seen in the portable Farfisas I have repaired. Many of these ICs (ay-1-5050, SAJ-180, etc) are extremely hard to find and can fetch pretty good prices. If you decide to harvest it for parts, I may be interested in buying some of the ICs.

If it uses transistors for the tone generation, there are probably around 150 transistors in that part of the organ alone. I'm interested to see if it uses individual boards for each note or lumps several notes together on one large board. Single tone generator boards from the portable Farfisas have gone for a lot on ebay. Farfisa and Vox had a few home console organs that shared many parts with their portable counterparts - including tone generator boards, so there is potentially some value there.

The bass pedal assembly could be worth something, as they are probably the same as the ones that the more desirable Combo Compacts and VIP series used. Somebody has a broken bass pedal key, they might pay a lot for a replacement.



EDIT:

Just saw your newest post. If the keys aren't already gone, I may be interested in buying them, as well as the foot pedal keys. And I'm definitely interested in the inductors, or the whole tone boards if they are the right kind. I fix Farfisas pretty frequently and the inductors especially are near impossible to find.

[iq01221]

IMHO, I'd try to restore it. Then, put some toogle switches in the signal path to improve with instruments. Always keepin' the originality, and the posibility to plug another sinth, or guitar, bas...whatever thru it.

[Puguglybonehead]

Well, you'll definitely dig the Leslie. Great for guitar and cool for vocals too. I guess I can see not wanting to try to restore a monster like that. Almost as unwieldy as a Hammond B3 or a Mellotron. Enjoy the parts harvest!

[paulyy]

What up Dino. Great find. I would of never thought to look at one of these for parts. People hear are all ways trying to give these things away. I will keep this in mind.

[Liquitone]

A friend of mine recently got rid of this Yamaha organ he got for free and gave me the oppertunity to harvest all the interesting parts before it went to the dump.
I got one of those white rectangular treble rotary's out of it that are also used in the yamaha leslie cabinets david gilmour uses.
I'm going to make it into a little portable roatary box for guitar.
Also it had this wierd (styrofoam?) sort of rounded off rectangular speaker inside it, that is huge! its about 15x25 inch.
I also got about 30 inductors from it that look exactely like red fasels, but have the TDK diamond logo on it,. they are very brittle,. one broke but got a chance to see they arent torrodial like the red fasel.

lovely stuff people sometimes throw away. but yeah if its very rare and fixable its worth looking into that instead of harvesting it.

[mac]

what to do???
keep it in good shape and original, it'will be your retirement plan in decades from now!!!


mac

[pinkjimiphoton]

dino, be careful with the speakers...sometimes them 12's are actually TWEETERS in organs.

if i were you?

i'd gut the damn thing, take whatever is worthy, and ditch the rest.

the leslie can be boxed and used ... i used to make 'em all the time, there's usually one wire for fast, and one for slow along with the common wire. you'll figure it out, but be careful, cuz it IS ac you're playing with.

the collectible farfisas are really more the combos...the spinets like this usually are only valuable to the person trying to ditch 'em

[digi2t]

dino, be careful with the speakers...sometimes them 12's are actually TWEETERS in organs.

if i were you?

i'd gut the damn thing, take whatever is worthy, and ditch the rest.

the leslie can be boxed and used ... i used to make 'em all the time, there's usually one wire for fast, and one for slow along with the common wire. you'll figure it out, but be careful, cuz it IS ac you're playing with.

the collectible farfisas are really more the combos...the spinets like this usually are only valuable to the person trying to ditch 'em

I'd believe it bro! Those speakers are tighter than a snare drum!

It's already gutted (slow day at work). Maybe I'll get one of the carpenters at work to make a box for the Leslie.

What up Dino. Great find. I would of never thought to look at one of these for parts. People hear are all ways trying to give these things away. I will keep this in mind.

YO PAULLY!! Long time no hear! Hope all is well. Yeah, start hitting those pawn shops for any early 70's Japanese cassette recorders. Especially anything put out by Bell & Howell. Some nice 2SB, 2SA, and 2SD transistors in there.

[paulyy]

@ Dino: Yeah. I try to look for old radios and stuff like that when my wife goes to antique shops. Today I did find an old zenith tube AM radio for 10 bucks! and it still works. Except the sting to the tuner was broken. I ended up guting it anyway and found three wax oil caps, five ceramic cap and six tubes. Four 12ba6's, one 35w4 and one 35c5. Not sure if I can do anything with the tubes but it was a cool find.