Philicorda
In the 1960s, the Dutch "Gloeilampenfabrieken Philips " in Eindhoven brought out one of the first electrical home organs for the mass market and shortly thereafter had more than 60% market share with their instruments, which they called Philicorda .
history
The fact that Philips, as an incandescent lamp manufacturer, even produced an electronic organ was not so much because tubes were still used for the sound generation technology at the time, but rather because Philips opened up to the technology market in the 1960s and a. also made the first portable compact cassette recorder .
In their own “ Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium ” in Eindhoven (called “Natlab”), Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaijmakers also worked on electronic music and new electronic musical instruments from 1960 to 1965 . With their participation, the prototype “AG7400” was created in 1961.
Models from 1961
In 1961 the Philips AG7400 organ appeared on the market as a prototype, a four-octave and one-manual version that had various audio inputs and outputs, foot sills, three registers and a one-finger chord automatic. The AG 7400 did not yet have its own system amplifier. At the beginning of 1963 the Philicorda was officially launched on the music market with the AG 7500/00 and the AG7500 / 11 (with labels in English) and the AG7500 / 22 (with labels in German). A separate tube amplifier with loudspeakers , called AG7600, was attached underneath the AG7500 . In 1965 , Philips changed its organ series designation and introduced the "750" series, whose instruments had six instead of four rotary controls, had spring reverb (reverbeo) and vibrato effects and an amplifier built into the chassis.
The Philicorda 751 in the model version GM751 / 11 (inscriptions in English) and GM751 / 22 (with the same in German) was followed in 1967 by the GM752 with a slightly different appearance of the toggle switches, in which transistors were built in in addition to the tubes for amplification . At the end of 1967 the Philicorda GM753 was the last organ in the 'old' Philicorda design. However, this version did not have its own amplifier with loudspeaker for the stage and was almost entirely transistorized. Although the Philicordas, starting with the AG 7400 up to the GM753, each had slight differences in sound, the warm basic sound typical of the Philicorda, based on the use of cold cathode relay tubes, was retained over the years. The range of all Philicorda organs is 4 octaves (= 49 keys) with a foot position of 8 '/ 4' / 2 '. The registers Vox I / Vox II / Vox III / Vox IV / Vox V can be controlled via the effect controls : Vibrato, Hall / Reverbo, volume, balance and combination (between automatic chord and normal manual). The volume can be fine-tuned using an external pedal .
One-finger chord automatic
The Philicorda organs are nowadays the 'great mothers' of the one-finger chord automatic , from which their name was finally derived and which has now been adopted internationally for almost all small keyboards. With the Philicorda automatic chord there is a chord assignment to individual keys, ie: if you press z. B. the "G sharp" sounds an E7 chord, with "A" an A minor chord. Each Philicorda has a total of 17 preprogrammed chords (C - A7 - Dm - Eb - Em - F - D - G - E7 - Am - B - G7 - Cm - H9 - Gm - F7 - C7), the key assignments of which are, however, between the AG7500 and the GM754 has changed. The chord section is also the split point of the manual; In its lower area, the organ can also generate a fixed sound in addition to the respective chords.
License construction
At the end of the 1960s, Philips granted a license to the American organ manufacturer Penncrest , who built the Philicorda 753 as a portable model in a case with a hinged keypad and gave up the natural wood design for the first time: the Penncrest 753 was blue or black.
Models from 1970
At the beginning of the 1970s, the design of the single-manual Philicorda was revised: the GM754 series (in which the loudspeaker openings were now located below the organ body) was created with a different chord assignment and with slide controls instead of the rotary controls, although the unmistakable sound remained unchanged. Shortly before that, Philips tried to establish two-manual Philicorda organs on the market for the first time as the 760 series. The first of these, the GM760 , was technically nothing more than two assembled GM753s from the discontinued series. Now the auto chord disappeared. In 1972 , the GM761 was followed by another two-manual organ, the sound and appearance of which was based on the GM754 and a Philips cassette recorder on which you could record your organ playing. The GM755 model, which was planned for the mid-1970s, never saw the light of day, as the Italian and Japanese organ keyboards had already started to triumph at that time.
At the end of the 1970s, Philips tried again to gain a foothold on the international organ market with the two-manual home organs, the " Rhythm 10 " ( GM758 ) and " AutoMagic " ( GM762 ). In this series, the visible fins in front of the speakers and the metal surfaces around the controls disappeared. Before that, the bridge disappeared between the rocker switches . Register switches, push buttons and sliders were kept in yellow, orange and brown. They replace the colors ivory, red, dark blue, gray and beige. The manuals had only one switching contact, which added switchable mixers and filters to the 12 oscillators and changed the sound. The GM762 came with a matrix keyboard for the 12 oscillator modules. This technology allowed the envelope curve on certain tones of the upper manual, as well as the equipment with sensor buttons for presets and slide potentiometers as drawbars , of which the lower manual with two (8 and 4) and the upper manual with 5 drawbars (16, 8, 4, 2⅔ , 2) have been fitted. It has a full automatic accompaniment with switchable drums, bass and chords. The organ is about 2.5 cm higher than its disarmed sister model GM758, which only has an automatic drum kit and only three presets that can be combined with the pre-set instruments. In this last generation the manuals are offset by an octave. You have a drum kit sound generator that is controlled by a sequence of preprogrammed rhythms. Tempo and volume are adjustable. Start and synchronous start are available. On the left of the volume control (pedal) there is a button to switch off the rhythm, which is operated by turning the foot. Shortly thereafter, however, Philips gave up his efforts and ceased production of Philicorda organs.
Sound and design
Even if from today's point of view the Philicorda cannot hold a candle to the Asian electronic keyboards in terms of sound, it is still interesting for collectors and enthusiasts, as it is now a trendy style icon due to its wooden design and the characteristic speaker openings (spokes) and also technically is almost indestructible; some Philicorda organs have been running with the original tubes for forty years. The sound variants are preset waveforms generated by filters and mixtures of fundamental and overtones that are modeled on classic instruments. These can in turn be combined. The Philicorda does not know the " Hammond click ". The push-button switch of the keyboard are corrosion-resistant coated wires on rails over which a tube of conductive rubber are being pushed, pressed. This is not a pressure-dependent attack like on a piano . This avoids a clicking and bouncing switch-on. The up to five switching contacts on a button do not always switch simultaneously.
Sound generation
The models in transistor technology have 12 oscillators or modules that each generate a tone in the highest overtone of the highest octave and are tuned to this. Halving the tone frequency corresponds to the tone of the octave below. The Philicorda uses the integrated circuit "SAJ110" and the contained T-flip-flops connected in series in their capacity as frequency divider . It is sufficient in one octave at these models retune since the tones other octaves in the fixed divider ratio of 1: 2 are provided.
Earlier tube models initially used dedicated oscillators for each tone based on the Hartley circuit . Later, discrete flip-flops with 2 transistors and 2 capacitors were used to save the state. The clock was fed in behind a series resistor for the operating voltage via a third capacitor, which led to the tipping over.
The modulator frequency of the vibrato effect cannot be changed; it can be switched on or off using a switch and its strength can be selected using a rotary or sliding potentiometer .
Professional commitment
Well-known and avowed Philicorda players in German-speaking countries are / were the Cologne band "Locas In Love", the musicians of the group "Paula", the cabaret artist Hanns Dieter Hüsch and the musician Danny Dziuk ( Stefan Stoppok , Dziuk's kitchen ). Swedish indie musician Ellinor Blixt (from It's a Musical ) and Swedish keyboardist Tobias Winterkorn (from Junip ) also use Philicorda models for studio recordings, the latter also for live concerts.
Web links
- Rainer Nickel: Philips philicorda (model overview with pictures and descriptions)
- Manuals, circuit diagrams and tuning diagrams
- Manual, circuit diagram and tuning plan of the GM751 ( Memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 9.6 MB) (archive.org)
- Manual, circuit diagram and tuning plan of the GM755 (PDF; 5.7 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Maurizio Spampani: Philicorda on Youtube from June 25, 2012
- ↑ Dirk Elsemann: Philicorda 22 GM 761 of November 9, 2016
- ↑ Steven Wuyts: Philicorda mint condition great sound! on Youtube from July 2, 2012.
- ↑ Åke Holm: Philicorda GM751 , accessed November 28, 2016
- ↑ Peter Anderson: Philicorda GM-751 , accessed November 28, 2016
- ↑ morrmusic: Official music video: It's A Musical - "For Years And Years" , on Youtube from April 27, 2012
- ↑ http://www.musik-sammler.de/media/136447 Credits from JUNIP's "Black Refuge" EP