My dad had two of those. He played solo in the late '70s and early '80s at supper clubs and the like (old school dinner and dancing kind of places) with a drum machine and base pedals. A one man four piece band. You want to hear it at it's best run the organ through a Leslie cabinet. The real trick is playing guitar and organ together without them being just mirrored, for instance playing background organ chords while fingerpicking a melody. My old man was a big Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Roy Clark fan so fancy fingering with a really clean sound was his style all along.
@@neilkendall5499The organ part will play at the same volume no matter what your right hand is doing, the guitar part depends on how hard you strum the strings/which strings you strum..
The Roland GR55 and a Godin multiac like the XTsa will get you all this, and hundreds more options, including amp, guitar, pickups, and effects modeling built in. The GR55 is ignored because it isn't intuitive and takes time to learn. Check them out.
Most of the Guitorgans were built by MCI in the 70's using Japanese ES-335 copies, so seeing one built into a ES175 was a nice change. BTW, all those glitches you're experiencing with the controls and switches could be probably solved simply by cleaning them with Deoxit-5.
And if he has any circuit level problems, call a guy who fixes classic arcade and pinball machines. They'll know exactly how it works, once they see this video. Retro computer and hi-fi people are probably fine as well if all it needs are a few components replaced like capacitors or faders.
yea that's the basis of the old Leslie whirlwind system, it was an awesome effect back in the day, keyboardists like Rabbit Bundrick used it a lot, check out his work with The Who and Crawler..
When it seems like clickbait but it actually doesn't do the video justice. This thing is WILD. Also, if you're writing those little history blurbs in your videos, you're super good at it. It's hard to use brevity and still communicate everything in a context like this, pretty dope.
EH makes the B9 pedal that makes your guitar sound like an organ. Hands down the best pedal I have ever had. No latancy, perfect. I use it in my solo gig for added texture. Get one.
My board, in various combinations, has B9, Bass9, Synth9, Mel9, Keys9, and/or String9 on it, as well as the ever present POG. Basically I replaced all my 13 pin stuff - EHX got the poly tracking down with much better overall tracking than the synth stuff. If yer looking for that little extra something for your rig they're hard to beat.
what’s cool is you’re phrasing your playing like an organist would which, in my opinion, is how to approach any synthesized tone…if it’s a flute tone, play lines & phrases a flautist would play; I used to play with an old school piano player that reluctantly got a DX7 in the ‘80s and, no matter what setting was on, he played Bluesy, Boogie Woogie piano riffs which didn’t sound great on the sax or harmonica settings 😎
That would be an amazing tool for concerts where you need an organ player but you need the guitar to fill the sound, mixing them together and using one or another intermittently sounds be quite nice
I live in Waco, and a friend of mine (who has passed) used to build those. He told me about them but this is the first time I've actually heard one played. He told me about how they modified the guitars, ran the wires, did board-level diagnostics, etc (he was an electronics teacher, so more of the tech part). Pretty cool.
Personality, and soul, that what that thing is about. It's the vinyl record to the digital media, the analog recorder, to the digital high tech stuff. It's just a beautiful reminder of how warm old tech used to be.
Fascinating guitorgan- something I never knew existed! It may be obsolete thanks to MIDI but the old becomes new and enthralling in this dystopian future we are all headed into. The Vibraphone and vibrato settings are enough to make this essential for church guitarists and Ray Manzarek fans. Thanks for another great episode!
Grew up in Waco. I got the entire tour of his shop one day. I could not fathom what he was doing. He actually sliced 5 paralell cuts down completely through the frets and routed a mortise down the back of the neck for the ampinol cable, It was wonderful. He let us try it and it was perfect for Green Onions, big hit at the time. If you knew some guitar chords - you were in business. I thought I remembered he was actually in Robinson, a Waco suburb. Thought until now I was the only one who remembered it. The day I was there he had me play it through a Leslei/Whurlitzer rotating speaker - beautiful. At that time you took him your guitar and he converted it and it came with a brief case with the computer in it (solid body guitars). Thought I would never see this come to public attention. Thank you for this sweet vid. //ji John Ingram - at the time THE SANDS OF TIME
It’s so interesting because organ gets it’s sound from wind pipes pushing air and to get such a similar sound vibrating metal strings, all because the signal is sent to a pickup and the rest is magic I guess
the organ its emulating is a hammond organ, which creates its sound via spinning "tonewheels" in front of electromagnetic pickups. no wind involved in the original either.
This guitar doesn't use the pickup for its organ sounds. It uses special frets to detect which note is fretted and then the organ sound is entirely electronics.
One thing that is awesome with old electronics is that most of it is off the shelf thru-hole components that are easy to service and replace. Well if you have some basic knowledge of how electronics, a multi-meter and a soldering iron works that is. And yes you should have that in your home as that is an essential skill set to have especially when working with electric instruments years on end. Usually it's the capacitors that give out with age and need to be replaced or corrosion is messing with connectivity nothing that a bit of solder and flux can't fix.
Very true. . . . and not really news: “My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.” Igor Stravinsky
@@deVeaux3962 So, you mean, just be stupid and ignorant? Since, that is what one becomes when applied to intelligence, which in turn led to the planet with all on it, as it is. I think, I can therefore say: Igor did that onto himself, intelligence-wise, seeing what he wrote there.
@@Xogroroth666 Um. . . Well. . . No. Keeping it in the context of this video, and in what Stravinsky was referring to, the discipline of limitations has the effect of focusing the creative mind. Applying this idea to intelligence would be out of context. But, then, I am having a bit of trouble understanding what you're trying to write, not only in this comment but one of your earlier ones in this thread. What do you mean by this, above: "The ONLY limitation the wielder is. Or, her/his imagination. ;)"
It’s really funny how far ahead of its time this was when you think of chiptune music from early video game consoles compared to doing it with a literal guitar with a computer bolted into its back.
Spelat gitarr hela mitt liv. När jag kommer till synt, bas, trummor etc låter jag de andra som kan spela sitt instrument. Annars intressant video och fin upplägg!
It's been a long time since a guitar review has made me smile. I'm still grinning from ear to ear. Funny thing. I started playing guitar in '71 and I don't remember that guitar at all. Guess they didn't promote it heavily.
This guitar would've been very expensive in the 70's... Too expensive for most people. So they wouldn't have marketed it to regular people. It was probably marketed just to studios and professional musicians.
Good to always be reminded of how awesome your dad is.. you need to interview him here from time-to-time. Would be cool to learn why he even decided to build a Leslie type thyng.
This thing sounds so cool! As someone who fixes old electronics, I can tell you just looking at the board that it has a ton of electrolytic capacitors. At least the long blue things look like axial capacitors which were used all over in the 70s. These dry out and leak over time and are probably causing some of the noise issues you are experiencing. If you were to take this to an electronics repair person, they can get the cap values off the caps, replace them, clean up the board and any corrosion caused by the leaking caps and it may well restore the electronics parts to good as new.
GOOD point. old capacitors have a tendency to go bang. people who repair old valve radios reckon to replace all caps as a matter of course. i had a cap explode (15mm dia 20mm tall)......... i was glad i wasn't in the same room at the time.................. pretty scary !!
Eugene (Big Ross) Ross had one of these things when I first met him in the late 70’s in Houston. He played guitar for Ray. Most unfortunately he is most remembered for the public spat the 2 of them had at a live concert and Eugene was fired. At the concert. Even Ray had to admit how awesome Eugene was as a guitarist. He did not hang on to his GuitOrgan for long. It had horrific action even after adjustment and it was just a curiosity for him. I lost touch with him back in the 90’s. He finished up playing down in NOLA. Great guy and one of the finest musicians I ever had the honor to know, learn from, and great stories when I got the rare chance to just go hang. Old musicians and their stories :-)
Pretty rad! You could use that right hand for overhand fretting of unused strings. Or tapping, Also I was hoping to hear what happens when you over bend a string
I like it more than most midi arrangements. The play is SO analog it keeps the soul of the human musician completely intact. Could listen to you play that thing all day long.
Guitorgan. They were out in the sixties. I knew a guy that wired his frets on his tele to a Hammond B3. It was amazing. He also put a switch on his guitar to control the speed of the Leslie.
I saw one at a small midwestern guitar store several years ago. They wanted around $400-500 for it. I still wonder if I should have gone ahead and bought it. Certainly a unique instrument! Nice demo video.
For that price it almost certainly didn't work... they're $$$ in properly working condition. There's a LOT of guts in there. There's a sensor for each string on each fret, then you have the tone generators. Consider 40 years of component drift, and the fact that any electrolytic caps (the only good news is there shouldn't be many of those since this doesn't use mains voltage) need replaced. It really is like servicing/recapping an organ. I *really* wanted one of these for a long time if you can't tell. 😂
that's zakkerly what i thought: ghast my flabber. could maybe be a maintainence problem if you used the instrument lots and the frets needed attention tho ??
We may not need a guitar with a polyphonic transistor organ inside it nowadays, but the idea of picking up midi from string on fret contacts sounds pretty much still relevant. Well at least for those who can't play the keyboard.
that's so awesome, I heard of these things but didn't knew about the frets. lately I thought about midi guitars and I had this exact idea for using your guitar like a keyboard or does something like this exist already?
It could use a total recap and some basic electric engineering love: clean the switches and knobs with ipa or if they are really bad, first with contact cleaner and then with ipa, resolder the complete circuit with fresh soldering tin, and maybe do some rewiring. Changes are the draw bar that goes wild might come back to normal function and the instrument will sound fresh and crisp.
This is similar to the Gibson RD Artist. It had moog electronics but it's not an organ guitar. RD's were a variant of a Firebird-Explorer body but w a reg Gibson headstock and maple body. A couple hundred were made w mahogany bodies and MVX Victory necks. I actually have one of those. I replaced the crappy electronics/pickups. It shreds. Has a unique tone
I've actually had a go on one of those things years ago but because I'm left-handed it was not a sensible proposition. Also, only half the controls were working. You can get a fair bit of the organ sound effects out of Electro-Harmonix pedals in a more convenient form. But this was interesting for its day.
Love how this was done 40 years ago and people today like to say that a MIDI guitar just technically isn't possible. Shows you how expansive people were on the technology when this guitar came out and how much farther we have come. Because now we do have MIDI guitars, Guitars with pedals in them, and probably more that I never have heard of before. This is really cool. I didn't believe the video at all at first. I thought this was a late April Fools joke. Thanks for sharing!
Godwin made a very similar one in black - Godwin Organ (even the board in the back looks similar). Although it had a multitude of single toggle switches on the front control panel. It also had one of those power boxes. I picked one up in a pawn shop in my late teens as I thought it looked pretty cool - Although it didn't have the box included. This was pre-internet so there wasn't a lot of information about them. I noticed the frets were rather worn (from the organ playing), so promptly tried to replace them. Only to find that they were attached to wires under the fretboard LOL. It is as you said - if you don't have the power box they're basically useless. I ended up just making it into a regular semi acoustic which is still in the shed somewhere. Although with modern electronics, I was thinking of resurrecting it if I ever get the time. Nice find!
I had one in the 70s from Cintiolis in philadelphia. It was black, looked like a 335 and heavy with a thick cable that went into a volume pedal like contraption. After about a week it stopped working, no one could fix it and i returned it. I bought a leslie 145 for it also which was awesome for guitar as well. The hardest part was to play guitar parts that were convincing organ licks. As i remember the frets were not straight , they were seperated at each string and bending a string was not possible.
I don't think you know much about midi guitars and similar gear (like the GR-55) to say that. A good godin midi guitar, for example, IS everything and more that you want.
Nice job getting this old trooper out on the stage again! It's quite an accomplishment. I don't agree with you terming this guitar as weird. It's really quite an instructional masterpiece. Somebody could rewire this thing and it's go potential for just teaching so many combinations.
Very cool. Robert Noyce created the monolith semiconductor when he was making an electronic organ at home. He etched the current paths in silicon, replacing wires on hybrid semiconductors created a year earlier, using acid and tooth picks. So music created silicone valley! Noyce started my company, Intel, and others in his career. My employer served the music industry in engineering panel components and invention of devices making Dolby and Surround Sound possible. Good stuff
A trick to fretting notes and playing more legato without actually picking the strings is to hold your picking hand off to your side and just 'air' pick. It seems weird but the act of suggestive picking while just fretting the notes makes it work better in your head. Try it. Also, you could have said inexpensive Ibanez instead of cheap. Some 70's Gibson hollow body knockoffs were not cheap and very decently made guitars. I know of one very nice Ibanez 335 copy that comes to kind.
I have a MIDI guitar system from the late 90s or early 2000s, and I haven't used it for a long time, but one of the downsides I remember is that there was a certain amount of lag, and if you played really fast it could become an issue. If this guitorgan DOESN'T do that, that could be an advantage.
When I was about 20, I saw one at a guitar store in some guy's basement (Sid Kliner, NJ). Sid demoed it. Having just started, I was not sure what to think of it... I've thought of it from time to time. Thanks for this vid. It sounds better than I thought. Kudos to your dad for the Leslie thing.
A friend of my grandfather had a Guitorgan. It was an external attachment that allowed him to chord the guitar and have organ chords come out of the speaker.
I really dig the double guitar organ sound, best use for it as otherwise it just lets guitarists play the organ with a familiar interface, love that spinning speaker, with hybrid its a nitrous gospel carnival in box.
I had an earlier model that was built into a cherryburst Barney Kessel badged as a Norma underneath the Guitarorgan label. The frets were cut into 6 pieces, so no bending on notes. It was heavy, and sounded okay. Got rid of it sometime in the 80's.
I worked a Donavon Frankenreiter show and he had a guitar like this were there were contacts in each fret so it would create the Leslie sound with a pedal to blend the guitar and leslie together. He did it so he didn't have to travel with a b3 player as he would use it when he played chords to fill the sound as if he had a b3 player. He loved the guitar and would buy one anytime they popped up. I told him I'm always guitar hunting, he said if I ever find one hit him up.
I own three of the later peavey midibase (sic) & so the split fret thing is familiar. the peavey uses piezos to generate midi on-off, though, & strain gauges for string bending, so it articulates quite nicely. I have to keep the frets & strings very clean, though, & play carefully. chords & whatnot are good. the bass itself is an acquired taste, looks-wise, but holds its own, with two big active EMGs & a blend pot. I use the midi with its own volume pedal, & got rid of the adaptor box by hacking the internals of the bass's computer a bit. yep- you're on your own looking after these things, but they're a lot of fun & needn't be expensive or horrible base instruments- that ibanez gibson was a decent plank.
I once held a guitarorgan made by Gowin in my hands the sheer amount of switdched and knobs scared me wittless, 19 switches and 13 knobs was too much for me, but i loved the sound to get the full possibilities out of it you almost need a university degree. The one you demonstrate is easier to fathom i guess.
I picked up an old Yamaha organ for free. It has a rotating speaker and also a 1/4 input, works great for guitar and I love playing foot pedals for bass while I play guitar, so fun!!
You probably have 1 or 2 of the blue capacitors going bad. Capacitors are notorious for drying out (caps contain a wet dielectric substance) and will not work to their full capacity rating. You can buy a capacitor tester and pull one leg of each capacitor from the board using a solder iron and needle nose pliers. Be aware of + and - polarity and hook the leads of the tester to both ends of the capacitor. The tester will give you a digital number that is supposed to be within +/- 20% of the rating number on the side of each cap. I like +/- 10%.
Most of the problems of this guitar organ are easy to fix - just clean or replace switches and drawbar potentiometers. And depending on quality of electronics it might require being under power for some hours to restore electrolytic capacitors, or straight replacement of those with some quality brands... If I had money, I'd buy it just for the novelty. Even if broken, it's worth time and effort to repair...
The Doors in one instrument, incredible
Missing a Fender Piano Bass.
🤣😂😅
@@tjenadonn6158a Taurus or 12 Step would solve that problem
Sounds way better than what I was expecting! Impressive for the time.
... Especially in the hands of an amazing, versatile guitarist. You have to take your time with a guitar like that. Very cool.
Iirc there are six sensors under each fret. Fully polyphonic well before it’s time.
Definitely! And still impressive in 2023, sounds great!
What was so hard for the time? They had electric organs that sounded the same. That generation had better sounds then people do today.
@@AnonOmous-lj1qn We still have the same options for sound. It's not magic, it's just electronics.
My dad had two of those. He played solo in the late '70s and early '80s at supper clubs and the like (old school dinner and dancing kind of places) with a drum machine and base pedals. A one man four piece band. You want to hear it at it's best run the organ through a Leslie cabinet. The real trick is playing guitar and organ together without them being just mirrored, for instance playing background organ chords while fingerpicking a melody. My old man was a big Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Roy Clark fan so fancy fingering with a really clean sound was his style all along.
How is it possible to play guitar and organ together without them being just mirrored?
@@neilkendall5499The organ part will play at the same volume no matter what your right hand is doing, the guitar part depends on how hard you strum the strings/which strings you strum..
Roy Clark is a criminally underrated guitarist
BASS pedals you mean not BASE
Cotton Westhoff?
Nice to see a quality demo of one of these!
Whoa, youtuber crossover comment! Just made my day, Trogly!
Holy smokes it's Austin!! Thanks for my daily dose
You've just introduced me, a guitarist for over half my life, to an awesome new thing! And boy do I want one...
The Roland GR55 and a Godin multiac like the XTsa will get you all this, and hundreds more options, including amp, guitar, pickups, and effects modeling built in. The GR55 is ignored because it isn't intuitive and takes time to learn. Check them out.
@@robdavis8307 Minus the "super cool" value.
@FunnyHaHa420 maybe not "super cool," but at least attainable and reliable. I was simply pointing out an alternative to those who might be interested.
An Electro Harmonics B-9 pedal does it easier without all the cumbersome peripherals and gives you 9 different organs for under $300.
fishman tripleplay + some synth of your choice is the modern equivalent
Ive been playing for decades, and ive never heard of such a guitar. This thing is awesome.
Most of the Guitorgans were built by MCI in the 70's using Japanese ES-335 copies, so seeing one built into a ES175 was a nice change. BTW, all those glitches you're experiencing with the controls and switches could be probably solved simply by cleaning them with Deoxit-5.
And if he has any circuit level problems, call a guy who fixes classic arcade and pinball machines. They'll know exactly how it works, once they see this video. Retro computer and hi-fi people are probably fine as well if all it needs are a few components replaced like capacitors or faders.
@@mal2ksc And you best call them soon before they are all gone.
Eh, some of us younger folks are psycho enough to do it too. We won't be going anywhere soon. ;D@@TUTruth
The sound you got out of the spinning speaker was amazing, i think it deserves it's own song.
Oscillating speakers are so rad. A buncha guys loved the Hammond B-3 for it. Still a highly coveted instrument.
yea that's the basis of the old Leslie whirlwind system, it was an awesome effect back in the day, keyboardists like Rabbit Bundrick used it a lot, check out his work with The Who and Crawler..
When it seems like clickbait but it actually doesn't do the video justice. This thing is WILD.
Also, if you're writing those little history blurbs in your videos, you're super good at it. It's hard to use brevity and still communicate everything in a context like this, pretty dope.
EH makes the B9 pedal that makes your guitar sound like an organ.
Hands down the best pedal I have ever had. No latancy, perfect. I use it in my solo gig for added texture.
Get one.
My board, in various combinations, has B9, Bass9, Synth9, Mel9, Keys9, and/or String9 on it, as well as the ever present POG. Basically I replaced all my 13 pin stuff - EHX got the poly tracking down with much better overall tracking than the synth stuff. If yer looking for that little extra something for your rig they're hard to beat.
Yes, I own the Mel-9 and you'd be hard pressed NOT to confuse it with a real Mellotron. I love it !
EHX B9 definitely does the thing.
Guitarists will do anything but learn a new instrument
@@framzoidthe mel9 will never leave my board
what’s cool is you’re phrasing your playing like an organist would which, in my opinion, is how to approach any synthesized tone…if it’s a flute tone, play lines & phrases a flautist would play; I used to play with an old school piano player that reluctantly got a DX7 in the ‘80s and, no matter what setting was on, he played Bluesy, Boogie Woogie piano riffs which didn’t sound great on the sax or harmonica settings 😎
The guitar + organ combo at 5:21 I thought sounded especially nice
It really did. I'd have loved to hear more of that.
That would be an amazing tool for concerts where you need an organ player but you need the guitar to fill the sound, mixing them together and using one or another intermittently sounds be quite nice
100% the best part of the video, I neeeeeed more of that!
It sounds like something Hendrix or Jeff Beck might have used around 1968. Really incredible :)
If EVH had coincided at the time of electric organ popularity, the world would be totally different. Because, this is friggin perfect for tapping on.
Dam dude. Just that mention is innovative of and in itself.
🤘 🎸 🤘
EVH was a guitarist when this instrument was available
He did use a Wurlitzer piano on “the cradle will rock” if he knew about this back in the day he would have definitely used it live
I live in Waco, and a friend of mine (who has passed) used to build those. He told me about them but this is the first time I've actually heard one played. He told me about how they modified the guitars, ran the wires, did board-level diagnostics, etc (he was an electronics teacher, so more of the tech part). Pretty cool.
One of your best uploads yet.
Weird, interesting and clean playing/ production.
Your guitar skills seem to have reached new levels lately.
4:35 THIS IS SO PERFECT FOR VIDEO GAMES I WANNA KNOW IF SOMEONE DID SO ALREADY
Personality, and soul, that what that thing is about. It's the vinyl record to the digital media, the analog recorder, to the digital high tech stuff. It's just a beautiful reminder of how warm old tech used to be.
I’m dying. If I could only show up to a gig with that and see my bandmates faces😂
Awesome video!
playing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"
Dude, you wouldn't even need bandmates, you'd have a freaking guitorgan.
Especially playing LADIES OF SPAIN at an ice rink.
Fascinating guitorgan- something I never knew existed! It may be obsolete thanks to MIDI but the old becomes new and enthralling in this dystopian future we are all headed into. The Vibraphone and vibrato settings are enough to make this essential for church guitarists and Ray Manzarek fans. Thanks for another great episode!
This thing is so cool. I feel like sounds coming outta that thing at 5:22 extended my lifespan by a few years
VOX tried this in the 60s - today very rare collectors items. Nice to see another model that works great.
I worked a lounge gig for 6 months with a guy who used one. It was a pretty cool experience, and for the time, it sounded amazing.
It sounds amazing now
Grew up in Waco. I got the entire tour of his shop one day. I could not fathom what he was doing.
He actually sliced 5 paralell cuts down completely through the frets and routed a mortise down the back of the neck for the ampinol cable, It was wonderful.
He let us try it and it was perfect for Green Onions, big hit at the time. If you knew some guitar chords - you were in business. I thought I remembered he was actually in Robinson, a Waco suburb.
Thought until now I was the only one who remembered it. The day I was there he had me play it through a Leslei/Whurlitzer rotating speaker - beautiful.
At that time you took him your guitar and he converted it and it came with a brief case with the computer in it (solid body guitars).
Thought I would never see this come to public attention. Thank you for this sweet vid. //ji John Ingram - at the time
THE SANDS OF TIME
It’s so interesting because organ gets it’s sound from wind pipes pushing air and to get such a similar sound vibrating metal strings, all because the signal is sent to a pickup and the rest is magic I guess
Very interesting
the organ its emulating is a hammond organ, which creates its sound via spinning "tonewheels" in front of electromagnetic pickups. no wind involved in the original either.
@@scottasin yes but there’s more history to the instruments than just the last hundred years
This guitar doesn't use the pickup for its organ sounds. It uses special frets to detect which note is fretted and then the organ sound is entirely electronics.
@@basvanderpeet5636 you don’t find it weird that it still has the pickups? A lot of truss rod work… “just leave the humbuckers”
One thing that is awesome with old electronics is that most of it is off the shelf thru-hole components that are easy to service and replace. Well if you have some basic knowledge of how electronics, a multi-meter and a soldering iron works that is. And yes you should have that in your home as that is an essential skill set to have especially when working with electric instruments years on end. Usually it's the capacitors that give out with age and need to be replaced or corrosion is messing with connectivity nothing that a bit of solder and flux can't fix.
"Sometimes limitations are nice" - absolutely love this.
The ONLY limitation the wielder is.
Or, her/his imagination. ;)
To Luke, Yoda said this.
Smart, Yoda was.
At least, in that, think I.
Very true. . . . and not really news:
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.”
Igor Stravinsky
@@deVeaux3962
So, you mean, just be stupid and ignorant?
Since, that is what one becomes when applied to intelligence, which in turn led to the planet with all on it, as it is.
I think, I can therefore say:
Igor did that onto himself, intelligence-wise, seeing what he wrote there.
@@Xogroroth666 Um. . . Well. . . No. Keeping it in the context of this video, and in what Stravinsky was referring to, the discipline of limitations has the effect of focusing the creative mind. Applying this idea to intelligence would be out of context. But, then, I am having a bit of trouble understanding what you're trying to write, not only in this comment but one of your earlier ones in this thread.
What do you mean by this, above:
"The ONLY limitation the wielder is.
Or, her/his imagination. ;)"
The guitorgan spinny speaker combo sounds sick as hell!
honestly the combined guitar+organ sound is by far the best, wonder what that sounds with a little bit of gain!
The sticker over the Ibanez logo on the headstock… just gold.
It’s really funny how far ahead of its time this was when you think of chiptune music from early video game consoles compared to doing it with a literal guitar with a computer bolted into its back.
Spelat gitarr hela mitt liv. När jag kommer till synt, bas, trummor etc låter jag de andra som kan spela sitt instrument.
Annars intressant video och fin upplägg!
It's been a long time since a guitar review has made me smile. I'm still grinning from ear to ear.
Funny thing. I started playing guitar in '71 and I don't remember that guitar at all. Guess they didn't promote it heavily.
This guitar would've been very expensive in the 70's...
Too expensive for most people. So they wouldn't have marketed it to regular people. It was probably marketed just to studios and professional musicians.
I feel like I could just sit there for literally HOURS messing with this thing, looks like so much freakin fun lol.
Good to always be reminded of how awesome your dad is.. you need to interview him here from time-to-time. Would be cool to learn why he even decided to build a Leslie type thyng.
This thing sounds so cool! As someone who fixes old electronics, I can tell you just looking at the board that it has a ton of electrolytic capacitors. At least the long blue things look like axial capacitors which were used all over in the 70s. These dry out and leak over time and are probably causing some of the noise issues you are experiencing. If you were to take this to an electronics repair person, they can get the cap values off the caps, replace them, clean up the board and any corrosion caused by the leaking caps and it may well restore the electronics parts to good as new.
GOOD point. old capacitors have a tendency to go bang. people who repair old valve radios reckon to replace all caps as a matter of course. i had a cap explode (15mm dia 20mm tall)......... i was glad i wasn't in the same room at the time.................. pretty scary !!
Is it heavy?
LOL
@@RobotronSagei mean it’s a fair question
DOES IT DJENT THO?
nah but seriously it's GOTTA be heavy
Taking *MUSCLE* memory to the next level
Still no answers lol
Eugene (Big Ross) Ross had one of these things when I first met him in the late 70’s in Houston. He played guitar for Ray. Most unfortunately he is most remembered for the public spat the 2 of them had at a live concert and Eugene was fired. At the concert. Even Ray had to admit how awesome Eugene was as a guitarist. He did not hang on to his GuitOrgan for long. It had horrific action even after adjustment and it was just a curiosity for him. I lost touch with him back in the 90’s. He finished up playing down in NOLA. Great guy and one of the finest musicians I ever had the honor to know, learn from, and great stories when I got the rare chance to just go hang. Old musicians and their stories :-)
Pretty rad! You could use that right hand for overhand fretting of unused strings. Or tapping, Also I was hoping to hear what happens when you over bend a string
As soon as I saw the thumbnail, I said "It's a guitarorgan, isn't it."
man that thing looks like a ton of fun
When the gifted jamaican guitar player Pudu plays the organ patch on the Roland synth it couldnt sound more real. He would dig this.
bro i wanted organ in my music and never learned i could’ve done this
I like it more than most midi arrangements. The play is SO analog it keeps the soul of the human musician completely intact. Could listen to you play that thing all day long.
You can always count on Steve to bring us the weirdest shit 😂
I love it
Guitorgan. They were out in the sixties. I knew a guy that wired his frets on his tele to a Hammond B3. It was amazing. He also put a switch on his guitar to control the speed of the Leslie.
I saw one at a small midwestern guitar store several years ago. They wanted around $400-500 for it. I still wonder if I should have gone ahead and bought it. Certainly a unique instrument! Nice demo video.
For that price it almost certainly didn't work... they're $$$ in properly working condition.
There's a LOT of guts in there. There's a sensor for each string on each fret, then you have the tone generators. Consider 40 years of component drift, and the fact that any electrolytic caps (the only good news is there shouldn't be many of those since this doesn't use mains voltage) need replaced.
It really is like servicing/recapping an organ.
I *really* wanted one of these for a long time if you can't tell. 😂
@@VinceWhitacre Hahahah I CAN tell 😂 If it had more non-organ (organic?) sounds I’d want one badly but for now I’ll stick to my MIDI guitar
@@VinceWhitacre Good point ☝️ I didn't actually try it. So I just assumed it was totally functional. It was still cool to see it in person though 😉
I am flabbergasted. to think of, design and produce a guitar w/ each fret electrified? sounds crazy but they made it happen.
that's zakkerly what i thought: ghast my flabber. could maybe be a maintainence problem if you used the instrument lots and the frets needed attention tho ??
I was hoping you to try out the keyboard solo for Highway Star. Interesting guitar and quality content as always.
We may not need a guitar with a polyphonic transistor organ inside it nowadays, but the idea of picking up midi from string on fret contacts sounds pretty much still relevant. Well at least for those who can't play the keyboard.
that's so awesome, I heard of these things but didn't knew about the frets.
lately I thought about midi guitars and I had this exact idea for using your guitar like a keyboard or does something like this exist already?
It could use a total recap and some basic electric engineering love: clean the switches and knobs with ipa or if they are really bad, first with contact cleaner and then with ipa, resolder the complete circuit with fresh soldering tin, and maybe do some rewiring. Changes are the draw bar that goes wild might come back to normal function and the instrument will sound fresh and crisp.
No, not, not IPA! DeoxIT!
IPA is just the wrong solvent in this situation and I only use anhydrous 99.9% IPA in electronics.
definite recap. i had a cap pop. it was only small - but very scary when it let rip
I think Electro-Harmonix offers a few pedals that will allow you to accomplish the same things.
This is similar to the Gibson RD Artist. It had moog electronics but it's not an organ guitar. RD's were a variant of a Firebird-Explorer body but w a reg Gibson headstock and maple body. A couple hundred were made w mahogany bodies and MVX Victory necks. I actually have one of those. I replaced the crappy electronics/pickups. It shreds. Has a unique tone
Python doesn’t even get an honorable mention?! I’m furious
4:00 so that's how the music for leisure suit Larry was made....
Sounds way better than any midi guitar I’ve heard.
I've actually had a go on one of those things years ago but because I'm left-handed it was not a sensible proposition. Also, only half the controls were working. You can get a fair bit of the organ sound effects out of Electro-Harmonix pedals in a more convenient form. But this was interesting for its day.
Love how this was done 40 years ago and people today like to say that a MIDI guitar just technically isn't possible. Shows you how expansive people were on the technology when this guitar came out and how much farther we have come. Because now we do have MIDI guitars, Guitars with pedals in them, and probably more that I never have heard of before. This is really cool. I didn't believe the video at all at first. I thought this was a late April Fools joke. Thanks for sharing!
I had an old CORT from Sears way back when that had 6 effects buttons on it. Pretty trippy guitar sounded wild.
Godwin made a very similar one in black - Godwin Organ (even the board in the back looks similar). Although it had a multitude of single toggle switches on the front control panel. It also had one of those power boxes.
I picked one up in a pawn shop in my late teens as I thought it looked pretty cool - Although it didn't have the box included. This was pre-internet so there wasn't a lot of information about them. I noticed the frets were rather worn (from the organ playing), so promptly tried to replace them. Only to find that they were attached to wires under the fretboard LOL.
It is as you said - if you don't have the power box they're basically useless. I ended up just making it into a regular semi acoustic which is still in the shed somewhere. Although with modern electronics, I was thinking of resurrecting it if I ever get the time.
Nice find!
I had one in the 70s from Cintiolis in philadelphia. It was black, looked like a 335 and heavy with a thick cable that went into a volume pedal like contraption. After about a week it stopped working, no one could fix it and i returned it. I bought a leslie 145 for it also which was awesome for guitar as well. The hardest part was to play guitar parts that were convincing organ licks. As i remember the frets were not straight , they were seperated at each string and bending a string was not possible.
That's so cool! I need to hear it through a death metal pedal
This was incredible. Honestly I expected a gimmick experimental type of deal but this was really good
Vox made a guitar in the 60's that as a guitar/organ hybrid.
Wow. I've been interested in guitars for decades and have used guitar synths, but never ever knew about the guitar organ. Thank SG!
Your Dad needs a youtube channel. He builds the coolist stuff. SamuraiBuilder
Nah. Senseibuilder! ;)
@@nalk20 Perfect
I've seen a few of these broken open over the years, but never heard one! That thing sounds nuts!
This kind of feels like what those midi guitars SHOULD'VE been
like the peavey midibase & cyberbase- they had split frets.
Especially the mindlessly shilled Jammy
I don't think you know much about midi guitars and similar gear (like the GR-55) to say that. A good godin midi guitar, for example, IS everything and more that you want.
@@charlespancamo9771 I was more talking about the ones with plastic buttons that played midi samples, not today's midi controller guitars
@@cambriakilgannon12 the one i was thinking of is like 20 years old lmao makes those toys look even more pathetic
Great Video - I love weird unique instruments like this. Really interesting sounds coming out of that thing for certain.
Nice job getting this old trooper out on the stage again! It's quite an accomplishment. I don't agree with you terming this guitar as weird. It's really quite an instructional masterpiece. Somebody could rewire this thing and it's go potential for just teaching so many combinations.
Pre-etty cool. I could find uses for this. Thanks!
A magnificent concept which SHOULD have been more widely adopted in the decades before midi.
Very cool. Robert Noyce created the monolith semiconductor when he was making an electronic organ at home. He etched the current paths in silicon, replacing wires on hybrid semiconductors created a year earlier, using acid and tooth picks. So music created silicone valley!
Noyce started my company, Intel, and others in his career. My employer served the music industry in engineering panel components and invention of devices making Dolby and Surround Sound possible. Good stuff
A trick to fretting notes and playing more legato without actually picking the strings is to hold your picking hand off to your side and just 'air' pick. It seems weird but the act of suggestive picking while just fretting the notes makes it work better in your head. Try it. Also, you could have said inexpensive Ibanez instead of cheap. Some 70's Gibson hollow body knockoffs were not cheap and very decently made guitars. I know of one very nice Ibanez 335 copy that comes to kind.
I have a MIDI guitar system from the late 90s or early 2000s, and I haven't used it for a long time, but one of the downsides I remember is that there was a certain amount of lag, and if you played really fast it could become an issue. If this guitorgan DOESN'T do that, that could be an advantage.
When I was about 20, I saw one at a guitar store in some guy's basement (Sid Kliner, NJ). Sid demoed it. Having just started, I was not sure what to think of it...
I've thought of it from time to time. Thanks for this vid. It sounds better than I thought.
Kudos to your dad for the Leslie thing.
Awesome Man, Thanks,...
A friend of my grandfather had a Guitorgan. It was an external attachment that allowed him to chord the guitar and have organ chords come out of the speaker.
I really dig the double guitar organ sound, best use for it as otherwise it just lets guitarists play the organ with a familiar interface, love that spinning speaker, with hybrid its a nitrous gospel carnival in box.
Thank you for showing me another guitar I need! I love the speaker your dad made ❤
I had an earlier model that was built into a cherryburst Barney Kessel badged as a Norma underneath the Guitarorgan label. The frets were cut into 6 pieces, so no bending on notes. It was heavy, and sounded okay. Got rid of it sometime in the 80's.
I worked a Donavon Frankenreiter show and he had a guitar like this were there were contacts in each fret so it would create the Leslie sound with a pedal to blend the guitar and leslie together. He did it so he didn't have to travel with a b3 player as he would use it when he played chords to fill the sound as if he had a b3 player. He loved the guitar and would buy one anytime they popped up. I told him I'm always guitar hunting, he said if I ever find one hit him up.
Dude, that is seriously mind blowing and I want one! You made it sound cool as heck!
Very interesting Sammi! Loved the HAmmond organ sound!
Super cool guitar; will try to emulate these tones through a midi one day in the future.
I own three of the later peavey midibase (sic) & so the split fret thing is familiar. the peavey uses piezos to generate midi on-off, though, & strain gauges for string bending, so it articulates quite nicely. I have to keep the frets & strings very clean, though, & play carefully. chords & whatnot are good. the bass itself is an acquired taste, looks-wise, but holds its own, with two big active EMGs & a blend pot. I use the midi with its own volume pedal, & got rid of the adaptor box by hacking the internals of the bass's computer a bit. yep- you're on your own looking after these things, but they're a lot of fun & needn't be expensive or horrible base instruments- that ibanez gibson was a decent plank.
I once held a guitarorgan made by Gowin in my hands the sheer amount of switdched and knobs scared me wittless, 19 switches and 13 knobs was too much for me, but i loved the sound to get the full possibilities out of it you almost need a university degree.
The one you demonstrate is easier to fathom i guess.
Was totally going to skip this video because I thought the tumbnail was some bad photoshop clickbait.
Boy was I wrong, and boy am I glad I clicked it!
Have you seen Phil Lesh's "Mission Control" bass? Sadly the electronics were all lost, but there are a few photos of the boards floating around.
I have an electro-harmonix C9 pedal that kind of captures the essence but that guitar blows it away. Very cool!
Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep) would love it. Ironically, I dialed up a Uriah Heep sound on a Boss SY-1000 (distorted guitar with organ) just yesterday.
A perfect guitar for a local baseball game gig.
This is the guitar I dreamed of building as an electronics-geek kid
I picked up an old Yamaha organ for free. It has a rotating speaker and also a 1/4 input, works great for guitar and I love playing foot pedals for bass while I play guitar, so fun!!
Thanks for sharing this with us
You probably have 1 or 2 of the blue capacitors going bad. Capacitors are notorious for drying out (caps contain a wet dielectric substance) and will not work to their full capacity rating. You can buy a capacitor tester and pull one leg of each capacitor from the board using a solder iron and needle nose pliers. Be aware of + and - polarity and hook the leads of the tester to both ends of the capacitor. The tester will give you a digital number that is supposed to be within +/- 20% of the rating number on the side of each cap. I like +/- 10%.
The outro is a classic roller skating rink sound blast from the past.
This thing has to be the source of all "roller-rink" music of the '70s.
Most of the problems of this guitar organ are easy to fix - just clean or replace switches and drawbar potentiometers. And depending on quality of electronics it might require being under power for some hours to restore electrolytic capacitors, or straight replacement of those with some quality brands...
If I had money, I'd buy it just for the novelty. Even if broken, it's worth time and effort to repair...