![]() Quite a few of them were made and, if you're lucky, you can still get one that works. Again, rumours of its demise were unfounded, and it would reappear 35 years on, thanks to bands like Arctic Monkeys and The Horrors. Yet when the smoke cleared and all of that rebellion had been co-opted by the mainstream music machine, the Vox was nowhere to be seen. It perfectly suited the rowdy recordings of bands like Elvis Costello's Attractions and the hyper-kinetic Ska stylings of Madness and The Specials. Perhaps because it had become unfashionable, the Continental and its offspring (Jaguar, Corinthian) became the go-to organs for Punk and New Wave musicians. Then, more than half a decade later, something strange happened: the Vox came back. The Vox Continental fell out of fashion as the 1960s came to a close - it just didn't fit in with the burgeoning heavy rock scene. It fuelled The Animals' House of the Rising Sun as well as Question Mark and the Mysterians' 96 Tears, before becoming the sound of The Doors' Light My Fire and, perhaps most (in)famously, Iron Butterfly's indulgent epic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Rather than replacing the mighty Hammond, the Continental carved out its own niche, finding favour with plenty of legendary acts and gracing many a classic cut. That thinner, more focused sound could cut through a raucous rock 'n' roll clatter without taking over the mix. The Vox simply wasn't capable of the stage-shaking rumble produced by a B3's spinning metal tonewheels.Īnd yet this proved to be one of its strengths. Wheezy, weedy, nasal at times, it was produced by transistor-based circuits. Many combo organs languished in closets and basements for years after that, before being resurrected in the 1980s and 1990s to create the “retro” sound of groups like Stereolab, the Fleshtones, and the Soup Dragons.Released in 1962 and designed as a more portable organ than Hammond's B3, Vox's Continental was everything the Hammond was not.Īlas, the sound of the Vox was equally anaemic compared to that of a Hammond. In the early 1970s, the appeal of that sound wore off, and musicians turned to more elaborate instruments, including the Hammond organ and the new breed of more sophisticated “synthesizers,” such as the Moog. For an idea of what the 60s sound was like, listen to such songs as The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” or Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-gadda-da-vida.” Yet the tinny, shrill output of these combo organs gave rise to a distinctive and instantly identifiable “60s sound” that was shared by some of the most popular groups of the day. The distinctive sound of these combo organs was probably intended to emulate a conventional pipe organ, although the similarity was quite vague. ![]() By the end of the decade there were dozens of different brands of “combo” organs on the market, many featuring attractively styled, brightly colored plastic cases. The Farfisa organ, introduced in 1965, was even less expensive and more compact-in fact, the top-selling Farfisa of the late ‘60s was called the Combo Compact. ![]() Musicians from the Beatles to the Animals snapped them up.Īs psychedelic rock hit in the later 1960s, another important transistor organ brand became available, this time from Italy. Made in England (and elsewhere later), the Vox was relatively affordable, sleek, rugged, and could be partially disassembled and packed in its special case for transport. Worse, they didn’t look very cool-nowhere near as cool as an electric guitar or a drum kit. The first transistorized organs were built for home entertainment, and although rockers sometimes brought them on stage, they were not really made to withstand the inevitable rough handling of life on the road. Two of the resulting instruments were the Vox and Farfisa. Smaller, cheaper, and less power-hungry than the electron tubes that weighed down big electronic organs, transistors made it possible for instrument manufacturers to reduce the size and cost of keyboard equipment. All that changed with the invention of the transistor. Electronic keyboard instruments like the mighty Hammond B3 were available, but were expensive and difficult to lug around. Numerous rock performers and “combos” (bands) of the 1950s used pianos in the studio, but it was difficult to amplify a piano properly so that it could be heard in live performances over electric guitars and drums. Keyboard instruments were a problem for the pioneers of rock and roll music.
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