Continental
Amongst professional electronic organs, this is one of few true classics.
The Vox Continental started life in the early 1960s. Probably the first organ created specifically for professional stage use. Certainly the first in this country & undoubtedly the best.
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Designed & built by the Jennings' Organ Company. Builders of valve church organs & the VOX range of guitar amplifiers.
When I started with the company these organs were built one at a time. In the same area as the multi-manual console models, this space also doubled for servicing.
My early experience in mass production was put to use. A storage area was cleared & set up for batch production.
This enabled us to build them at a greater rate, but not quite to Henry Ford's standard.
This photo, from before the production line was set up, shows an early stage of assembly. A colleague with a case during drilling and fitting.
The market was increasing rapidly, many famous names used the Continental. Britain does not have many success stories in the field of electronic musical instruments. This is one of the few, a brilliant design, exceptionally well executed. Including reverse key colours & striking Z shaped legs.
The original models have reliable germanium transistor circuitry, a coil-capacitor master oscillator & a chain of discrete binary dividers. One such set-up for each note family. This arrangement soon became the standard, adapted & successively cheapened by others.
On these early machines each 'generator' is built into a metal chassis. Twelve of these mounted in a rack & coupled by octal plugs. The 4 octave keyboard is wooden & good quality. The contact assembly is adapted from the valve ogans. Including removal of the conductive polymer bussbar strip, intended for a slow noise-free attack.
This gave a sharp attack, with a distinct click. Six drawbars are used for tone setting, obviously inspired by the Hammond organ. Four white ones for 16', 8', 4' & Mixture. Two maroon ones are marked with a sine & sawtooth wave. These give a soft flute like tone & a sharp reed tone.
The four tone harmonic mixture, together with the reed timbre, enables this instrument to cut through a mix. Even a screaming, distorted guitar can't drown it out. Definitely the ultimate group organ. Only the Farfisa Compact comes close (also germanium).
The drawbar assembly uses printed circuit switches standing vertically. This adds a couple of inches or so to the height of the trademark orange top. During production I had the idea of building this assembly upside down. Cutting a hole to drop it through the key-frame.
This worked well, allowed a sleek lower top & looked good. However, after building a few, it became obvious that the extra work was slowing production. It was reluctantly decided to revert to standard. So these versions are rare, effectively a limited edition.
This picture is one for the archives. It is the first slimline top VOX Continental, hand built by Ron Lebar in mid 1964. Camera was a Kodak Retinette, probably 'wide open' at f2.8 using 'available light'. Film was Ilford 800 ASA "pushed".
Taken, developed & printed by Ron Lebar. Using a dye transfer technique.
The organ is shown, together with its distinctive wooden music rest, just before being packed for sale. The crepe paper protective wrapping on the legs can be clearly seen.
It was the only one built quite like this, all before it were what is now known as 'square top'. With the high rectangular lid housing the upward facing printed circuit switches of the drawbar assembly. Nothing else was in that lid, which is what prompted me to make this version.
The few made after this used a sloped rectangular form, easier to make than the curve. This still slowed production, so the style reverted back for the remainder of that run. All sub-assemblies were produced in batches by sub-contractors & many were in stock.
So the dates quoted for models in 'Combo Organ Heaven' (an excellent site), may in some cases be the date when batches of parts were made, not when the finished organs were built. These were made in quantity & may have remained in stock for a year or so. A similar discrepancy occurs with other classic instruments. During my time building Continentals, we never date stamped them.
Location is the Jennings' Organ Company factory at West Hill, Dartford. This occupied part of a building, the remainder being a petrol filling station. Next door was a field, in the field was a shed housing the Service Department. To the right of that was a small row of semi derelict shops. One of these, a former fishmongers, was used for organ parts storage, upstairs housing the Design & Research Department.
Details of the early machines: The carrying straps were brown leather, blackened with shoe dye & polish. We could not get black leather straps in 1964.
The swell pedals were a Fender cord driven type, using an early 'insulation displacement' brass jack plug. The Fender name was carefully cut from the rubber mat & replaced with a VOX logo. A lot of cheating went on in those days.
On the publicity shots of the factory, the larger filling station was replaced by a copy of the VOX section. To make the little place look like a much bigger stand-alone building.
Before I joined, the company name had been changed to Jennings' Musical Industies. Everyone there still called it Jennings' Organ Company & this was still on factory paperwork.
Later, the metal chassis generators were replaced by bare printed circuits, firstly angled, with direct edge connectors. Later still the boards became smaller, enabling them to be placed in line, with pin type edge connectors. These changes cut production costs & time. The pin connector resulted in a tendency to intermittent connections.
The contact assembly was by then a purpose made unit, no longer an adaptation, with round silver plated busbars instead of flat nickel. My earlier inverted drawbar modification was later adopted at the sub-contract stage & became standard.
Later still a draconian design change took place. The highly reliable germanium master oscillators became silicon & the divider chains were replaced by integrated circuits. These are non-standard parts, used only in the music industry. Less reliable & more expensive than standard computer logic types. They also have deliberately different pin connections & are no longer available.
The almost indestructible wooden keyboard is replaced by an Italian plastic type. Due to the reversed colours the fragile keys are not available as spares. A dual manual model came out at the same time.
Pictured here is a 300H model, in our Mercia workshop. This uses round can dividers, which have proved unobtainable. Requiring a modification to each generator to use standard parts.
It also has left hand bass on the lower manual, switched from the pedals. This appears to be an after-thought, the contacts are stuck to the manual frame with double sided adhesive tape and tend to fall off.
Percussion was introduced at this time, continued on subsequent models. The reliable switched drawbars are replaced by cheaper & less desirable slider potentiometers.
Models after this were made in Italy, these use the standard keyboard for Italian organs of the period. Steel shafted keys, with thin, fragile plastic shells glued on. They often fall off or break. With, of course, the slide-pot drawbars.
Servicing.
For continued performance / survival of these classics it is essential that any servicing required is entrusted only to skilled, knowledgable people who really know the models. Serious, expensive & often terminal damge can be caused by bad workmanship. The following shows what can happen to someone's pride & joy in the wrong hands.
The left picture shows part of a tone generator, vandalised by a so called 'service technician'. The one on the right escaped his attentions. The many components crudely clipped out are clearly shown. Apart from this damage, caused to 2 generators, a drawbar switch was damaged & some manual wiring chopped out. All trim controls were deliberately mis-adjusted to their extremes.
Fortunately, although circuit information has never been readily available, I know the model well. This example is a fairly rare first variant, angled tone generators & my 'limited edition' slim line drawbar modification. Almost original, apart from a few earlier repairs.
The C generator after repair using available modern components.
More details on this repair, soon.
Later models.
An organ called the Jaguar was introduced. This looks like a proper Vox in some ways. The general case shape & orange top. Black naturals & white sharps. The bottom octave, doubling as left hand bass, has conventional colours. No drawbars, just a set of tabs on the left panel. These act more like basic tone controls, as on many other models without the VOX label, & bass is poor.
No individual footages, although 16, 8 & 4 are marked above the tabs. The whole thing is a sham, not really a Vox, not much of a jaguar, not even a kitten. A buzzing timbre, like many cheap Italian organs of the period, which is exactly what it is. It has discrete germanium transistor circuitry, but so did most others around then.
Keys are the steel shafted type, with flimsy glued shell caps. Single bent wire contacts make (or don't) on conductive plastic bussbars. Despite these comments we will still fix them, as with this battered example.
If you want a bit of that Vox magic, on a budget, this is not the best way.
Further late models will be featured, if & as they become available for photographing. Most are now very rare, but not classic.
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VOX. Updated on the 5th of September 2005. © Ron Lebar, Author.
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