Spinet Limitations

There are several significant differences between the spinets and the ConsoleOrgans to reduce the production costs. Many of these differences do affect the sound:

• Spinets do not have HarmonicFoldback. This eliminated a lot of extra manual wiring and allowed for shortened Busbars. Foldback gives the console organs a significantly richer and distinctive sound in the upper octaves.
• Spinets do not have ManualTapering. This eliminated all of calibrated resistance wiring used in the console organs. Tapering is used in the console organs to help eliminate keyclick in a more efficient way. It pre-emphasizes the higher frequencies and the frequency response of the pre-amplifier rolls off the upper end to restore the proper tonal balance. In effect, this reduced the sound of the high frequency keyclick. The spinet organs use amplifiers and speakers set to roll-off steeply after about 6kHz to limit the keyclick sound.
• Bass pedals are extremely limited on the spinets. This eliminates the steep cost of the 25-key radial pedal board and the larger bench. The spinets have only a single octave of pedals and the bass tone generators are wired to play monophonically. Unlike the console organs, however, the M series has a bass sustain switch on the expression pedal.
• Spinet organs have no provision for external speakers. They had internal speakers and amplifiers. This makes it harder to connect a LeslieSpeaker.
• The lower manual on spinet organs stops at F instead of C as on the console organs. This allows the elimination of the tone generators needed for these last five keys. This really limits playing bass on the lower manual.
• Spinets either have no (the M series) or very few (L-100 and M-100) presets. Generally, these are not programmable as they are in the console organs.

See HowToOvercomeSpinetLimitations