Only a bare minimum of plastics are used, and besides some cracks in the pedal caps (which are the worst part of the LS' design), the plastics have held up well. The electronic chassis are plated steel, with some cast metal frames holding the clavier and chassis assemblies. Despite being a "low-end" model, the cabinet of the LS is made of thick veneered hardwood, finely crafted and finished. Even in the heyday of tube organs, Lowrey's instruments did not sound quite like any of their contemporaries, and they certainly sound different from anything made today.Īs well, tube-based Lowrey organs are well-built and easy to repair. The combination of several unusual design choices makes for a distinct and recognizable sound.
However, note that the LS and all subsequent "Holidays" implement sustain in a "true" fashion (as do certain others, such as the "Heritage" series), while the SS and SST have "reverb-like" sustain (as does the "Festival", etc.) this difference in sustain behavior is perhaps the most significant point of distinction between Lowrey's tube organs, which are otherwise quite similar in timbre and expression. All Lowrey tube organs except the Organo use basically the same generator, keying, and tone-shaping techniques. Tones are routed to these filter-amps via rather complex tab switches, sometimes with passive components added for additional frequency emphasis. Formant filtering-a kind of subtractive synthesis-is used to shape the tones, but with Lowrey's distinctive twist: instead of having separate purpose-built formant circuits for each timbre, a set of shared filter-amplifiers with simple resonant low-pass characteristics are provided. Keyed signals are separated by pitch register and by clavier the registers having sustain are keyed electronically (in the LS' case, these include the pedalboard 16' and upper-manual 8' and 4'), while the non-sustain registers are directly keyed.
Various tricks are used to compensate for an abnormally minimal set of generators, including foldback, frequency division, and-most ingeniously-frequency "doubling". Tone generation is done using a frequency-divider system, producing asymmetric pulsewaves from the master oscillators, and squarewaves from the dividers. Along with the "Lincolnwood" SS and SST models of the same year, it was the first Lowrey to incorporate sustain, made possible by clever use of neon bulbs and unconventional vacuum tubes. Introduced in 1957, the LS was the first model in Lowrey's "Holiday" line of relatively small and inexpensive spinet organs. As we already have pipe organs, transistor organs, and digital organs as distinct and not-necessarily-interchangeable categories, so should be tube organs! I hope it encourages further renewed interest not only in Lowrey's tube organs, but the entire class of instruments generally. At this point, this article may as well be called "A Treatise on the Lowrey Vacuum-Tube Organ." Whether or not it is worthy of that title, I believe it is the most comprehensive piece on the internet about such things to date. Lastly, there is a video demonstrating the sounds. Then comes a long discussion of its electronics, explaining the function of most circuits, some important yet now-obscure ideas that Lowrey based their designs upon, and the merits and demerits of several tube-based designs. Following the history lesson, I recount the amusing story of how I acquired my Lowrey LS, and detail the various repairs performed on it. This article has become much longer and more detailed than originally intended it has expanded to cover not only the instrument shown above, but also the overall history of the Lowrey Organ Company and products thereof, with emphasis on their tube-based organs made between the mid-'50s and mid-'60s. Crasno Electronics - Lowrey "Holiday" model LS Lowrey "Holiday" model LS Electronic Spinet Organ
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