I started playing these models in the 1980s, my opinion was formed then and hasn't changed. The synth voices have never sounded like they're supposed to be the instruments they're named for. And that's always been the way with organs: Their makers create sounds of various kinds, then give them the name of a real instrument that they share some characteristics with, but they're not a substitute. An organ's strings voice never actually sounds like stringed instruments, for example, right from the days of pipe organs. This organ's synth voices tend to be squeggy disco synth effects on purpose, rather than trying to emulate the real thing. Others are just bad, like how this one's piano is much worse than the piano of other keyboards of its era. Their are some fun ones, but still obviously not real. And it is a bit peculiar that some 1970s organs often do a better job at it. Previously I had a 1970s big Yamaha model

I think that's right, there's far too much nitpicking in this review. These sounds don't hold up well against modern romplers, digital synths and sound generators but they are 40 years old, for crying out loud. There wasn't much, if anything, doing a better job back in 1981 when the U90 was released.

@@libertyordeaf I remember when we got this exact organ in the mid 80s in the house and I hated how poorly it sounded. No, it wasn't top notch then. Good synthesizers in the early 80s sounded much better than this, and they even cost the same. Those are still popular today, because of their distinct warm analog sound. This organ can't produce any of that. It has a very simplistic toy-like sound. Unfortunately, this behemoth is still in my livingroom and hasn't been used for 20 years. Dad was the only one using it, but he passed now, so I need to find a way to get rid of it.

@@henrikmikaelkristensen4784 I played synths in the early 80s and I can assure you almost everything that attempted to mimic an acoustic instrument sounded horrible. Name me a synth-keyboard that could do even a close approximation of an acoustic piano back then. Some could do passable strings or flutes but that was about it. I would agree that the U90 was horrendously overpriced and doesn't hold up today (unlike some Yamahas). On that basis, you'll have a job finding a new home for it. But for all its flaws, I don't think it was markedly worse than most other things going around back then.

​@@libertyordeaf OK, I think I misread you, sorry, because you're talking about whether they could produce realistic instruments. I agree that none of the synths back then could do realistic real instruments in the early 80s, but that only makes the U90 sound more like a toy, because you had no other options with it. You couldn't build up instruments or soundscapes from the basics and you would always be stuck with the "kitchy organ sound". You couldn't even hook it up to a computer to build your own music sequences, beyond the ridiculously primitive sequence programming that it had. More generalized, professional synthesizers *that actually cost the same*, didn't have this limitation. Even a Commodore 64 from 1982 hooked up to a keyboard was more interesting, because you then had an actual sequencer and an analog synthesizer. In any case, these organs are a horrible reminder that tech moves fast, and building a large piece of heavy wooden furniture that could never be upgraded is to me, borderline disgusting.

And still quite good in various ways. I certainly find these era of organs nicer to play than ones that need to be programmed to do anything useful

There's no doubting they take up room, but then a keyboard, stand, stool, and portable amplifier do as well, and take more setting up. ;-) I've always been amazed how piano movers can get a grand piano up flights of stairs, and sideways inside tiny elevators. And I had one gigging organist tell me how he used to take one of these organs with him to gigs laying on its back on carpet in the back of his car. They're hard enough to move as they are, without picking them up and tilting them. He must have had strong arms! I used to have a bigger Yamaha than this, and I still can't believe (or remember) how we got it in and out of the back of a friend's van without a mechanical lift.

The U60 was the model I always wanted to own as a youngster. Then, one day, I found this one (the model above) in a music shop, and just had to have it. Yes, I rarely ever use anything else but the flutes. Most of the other voices sound rather cheesey. I don't really care much for the strings and reeds, the brass 16 has a weird interaction with 16' flute, they don't work together well, it takes out all the bass warmth. The 8' oboe is too thin, though it can have an interesting combination with the 5 1/3' flute. The strings are way too bitey, they don't have the soft vvvvv sound of a pipe organ's string voices. I've really only made full use of the synth voices on one KZfaq clip kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bcppet1inNrRaIU.html They're okay for an effect, but not that good for general use

CameraTimDotCom good effort on a fun tune, it suits the 80s synth voices! I do use the 16’ Brass but usually with 8’,4 and possibly 2’ flutes for things like Trumpet Voluntary tunes

@@CameraTim-DAMMITDOTcom how much did you pay the U90?

@@vinyl.croatia I bought it second-hand from a music shop about 25 years ago for about $3000 (Australian). Nowadays any that you might find go for peanuts. I was told that at the end of its run as a new model in the 1980s it reached about $15000. It was the top model in its range back then

If you're talking about this particular recording, there isn't anything I can do about it. Each recording was made with different microphones in different places, trying things out, and dealing with objects in the way in a cluttered room. This one was recorded using a Samsung S9+ phone, with it's built-in microphones (which are a lot better than I expected, but definitely not studio mikes), and it's close up and above the keyboards right next to my shoulder. It's recorded on the phone, not edited, and the original camera recording uploaded to KZfaq. And in this clip, you're hearing mostly the non-directional woofer speakers which spreads sound in all directions, while the more directional tweeters are firing away from the microphones and not being picked up well. On older clips, when I wasn't using the phone to record with, I used a couple of Nakamichi CM300 mikes about a metre away from the cabinet, around seat height, without anything in the way of the tweeters. And other recent clips made with a mobile phone I've had the phone placed further away. And some clips have used ambient mikes plus transformer-coupled taps into the tone filter boards. Every recording sounds different. Usually the problem is the bass pedals are too quiet in a recording (though sometimes it does get the opposite of booming badly, simply because of speaker cabinet resonances - it does add some nasty resonances in places, and standing waves in the room). Much of the problem with recording the bass pedals sound is due to them being a very low pitch. I like the sound of the 16' voices the best, but they're an octave below the usual range. The 8' voices are too loud and cabinet resononces make them boom rather badly. So I usually just play using the 16' pedals by themselves. At the moment, long after that recording, I've been playing with adding external controls to individually adjust the levels of each bass pedal voice (putting in pots for the 16' flute, 8' flute, 16' tuba, bass guitar, and two pots for the string bass - the pluck is generated separately from the resonance). None of them are pure tones, though, they're all complex waveforms from filtered square or rectangular waves. In some cases the upper harmonics are annoyingly louder than the fundamentals, and that's harder to modify. I had been toying with the idea of a completely independent tone generators for the bass pedals, since I don't quite like the timbre, the guitar and string basses are a bit naff, and the B natural pedal nearly always sounds off-key, to me. And it'd be nice to have more than a single octave pedalboard. The vibraphone was actually distorting in the organ, that's been mostly fixed later on (the speaker muting circuit before the power amp was actually clipping the audio, and vibes were the worst at triggering it). What you listen to it makes a big difference, too. If I listen to this on some Sennheiser GameOne headphones the bass booms badly, including my voice, but I know that these headphones have over-enhanced bass (like a lot of personal stereo headphones do, too). But if I pick a different set of headphones, like beyerdynamic DT290, it's a different picture completely. And bookshelf speakers through a stereo amp sound about right (and that's comparing playback of this organ versus other sources through those speakers). Little computer speakers are never going to manage it, they're not big enough to do bass properly, and some artificially boost the bass to try and compensate, but they will break-up badly when the source already had strong bass.

@@CameraTim-DAMMITDOTcom Whoa, thanks a lot. But I am still wondering if i can adjust the bass amount ON the organ itself, not on the recording. Like, when I'm playing on higher volume, the bass is just too loud. Is there any way to adjust it or not?

@@vinyl.croatia Ah, you have the same/similar organ? While you can adjust the volume of some voices, like the bass pedals, that's not the same as adjusting a bass control on an amplifier (which affects everything). You have a few options, the simplest being where you place the organ. Bass is boosted when the organ is close to a wall, even more so if in the corner of a room, so moving it away can have a radical effect. After that, you're left with doing internal modifications. You can change the woofer to one less sensitive, or with a different resonant frequency. I've replaced mine twice, the original had a buzz from a drooping spider, the replacement tore the roll-surround. You could reduce the drive level to the woofer amplifier. If you have the skills to modify the organ, I have the service manual, and can tell you where to start.

@@CameraTim-DAMMITDOTcom Thanks, but that organ isn't mine, I just play it, so I would rather not mess with it too much. Anyway, thanks for your help sir.

@@vinyl.croatia Fair enough. You have one more non-modification option: Sit a hard reflective surface near it (try different positions) while you play, and bounce more of the treble towards you.

How can you get what? A 40 year old second-hand organ? Just look on ebay and places like it. I saw someone trying to give one away for free on Facebook marketplace last month. Never pay more than a couple of hundred dollars for something like this. You don't know what condition it will be in, whether it'll need lots of repairs, or be unrepairable. Mine's been through a lot of maintenance the last couple of years.

That's hard to say. Back when the model was new, it reached $15,000 (Australian) in its final days of being sold in shops in the 1980s. I bought mine second-hand in the mid-1990s, for about $3,000 from a shop (remember that's including the shop's mark-up, which is often double what they paid the seller). In recent years, you see ones somewhat like this being sold on eBay for a couple of hundred (or trying to be sold, with no bidders).

Does this organ have the same organ as the technics c600?

@@00blueprince I think a word is missing from that sentence to be clear about what you wanted to ask. If you mean the same tone generator, I don't know. Though the old practice of National Panasonic / Technics / Matsushita (all the same company under different names) has been to use very similar circuitry across a range of models (you can see this in service manuals for equipment from the 1970s and 1980s). So there's a good chance that a variety of Technics organs and keyboards (of that era) use the same tone generator integrated circuit chips, and similar filtering circuits. In the U90, all the voices are derived from several SVIGMC5227 ICs. The tab voices, some of the drum unit voices, solo synthesiser, and percussive voices, etc. Those ICs generate tuned tones, and further circuitry filters and shapes them into specific voices (altering harmonics, the attack and decay at the start and end of the note, etc).

@@CameraTim-DAMMITDOTcom do u have an email can u email me to luisibarra2525@gmail.com

I tried selling one on eBay 12 months ago,couldn't even give it away,ended up taking it to the tip.

like a mousetrap, lol, love this dude

​@@christopherpederson1021 I like this channel. I have a lot of respect for people who put time and effort into sharing their knowledge and experience for its own sake

It's not being handled "roughly," what a stupid thing to say. I'm only using fingertip pressure. I've had this organ for 30 years, there's no damaged switches on it anywhere.

はい、分かりました。私も、この機種はとても好きです。あなたの演奏素敵ですね。私もとても欲しかったオルガンです。

I've only seen those models over 30 years ago. I'd say because of their vintage they'd be quite similar to mine, but with different control panels. Various Technics organ models of that era often had some of the same sound generating boards, or very similar ones. Just some models had more options, others simpler. All of them had quite similar sound quality, but with different cabinets and speaker systems they do sound a bit different (think of stereo systems with big or small speakers, there's a difference in tonal quality when playing the same music through them). Mine has three sets of woofers and tweeters to spread the sound around the cabinet (coming from different places, and effects spread between them), and one sub-woofer. Others had less, I don't know if any had more. All the sound boards used analogue filtering circuits on square wave signals from frequency generator chips. It's the analogue filtering that turns square waves into a flute-like sound, or reed sounds, or any of the other voices. The only thing using digital samples were some of the sounds in the drum kit, with other sounds in the drumkit being made the traditional organ way - with shaped white noise signals (for things like cymbals) or shaped tones (things like conga drums). Even the reverb is an old-fashioned spring reverb tank. They have a microprocessor in them that controls everything, it scans all the switches and keys, can store settings and sequences, and it tells the frequency generator which pitches to produce, and switches on and off the signals going to and from the various sound boards. Mine's so old it doesn't even have MIDI. It was built in the era that MIDI was only just being developed.

@@CameraTim-DAMMITDOTcom thanks👍