How To Overcome Spinet Limitations

There are some solutions to reduce or eliminate the differences between ConsoleOrgans and SpinetOrgans but you either need to be pretty handy with a soldering iron or know someone who is. You may also need to have a source of spare parts. AddingFoldbackToASpinet is possible but may require replacing busbars and adding a lot of wiring. The resulting sound, however, will be very close to that of a console organ. Tapering is possible but is generally considered not worth the extreme effort. To taper a spinet manual would require completely replacing all the manual wiring with resistance wires of the right value or adding resistors to each manual wire. This would also require replacing the spinet amplifier with a console preamp, or rebuilding the amplifier to provide the same frequency response as the console preamp.

The bass pedals are pretty limited and there is not much you can really do. Generally, the sound of the spinet pedals is considered pretty poor as they are limited to the harmonic structure provided by the ComplexToneWheels. Even if you only wanted to use them for percussive "kicking" while playing bass on the lower manual, the lack of the bottom five keys is a handicap. While it is possible to rearrange the keys on the lower manual to reach the lower C, the spinet tone generators are missing the five tonewheels you'd need. You could replace the tone generator with a console organ generator... If you play in a band with a bass player, of course, then neither of these are serious drawbacks. If, however, you want to play without a bass player, then they're pretty much show-stoppers. (Again, if you're handy, see AddingBassToASpinetLowerManual.)

Lots of spinets have been modified to allow the use of a Leslie and the modification is fairly easy. While M series spinets do not have presets, there was an after-market preset available called the Electro-Tone. This consisted of a rotary switch mounted in the right lower manual cheekblock that adds 16 preset registrations to each manual. The switch was wired between the Busbars and the Drawbars. See http://www.geocities.com/df_blue for a photograph.