History, or "A combo organ, from Rheem? What's up with that?"

Started by Elantric, January 19, 2016, 03:59:32 PM

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Elantric


https://www.rheem.com/product/performance-plus-atmospheric-40-gallon-natural-gas-water-heater-with-9-year-limited-warranty-xp40s09he36uo/



By 1970, My 3rd band in Chicago - the keyboard player played one of these Rheem organs



http://www.combo-organ.com/Rheem/rheem.htm

History, or "A combo organ, from Rheem?  What's up with that?"

How Rheem got into the combo organ business, as told by Doug Moore:

"As far as I know, the whole thing started with a guy named Robert Metzner. He had a small import/export business, and on a trip to Japan, ran across a company that was making a continuously variable speed phonograph motor. He developed an audiophile turntable which he called the "Metzner Starlite" to be made in Japan for sale in the United States.



The product was quite successful, so Bob Metzner decided to expand the operation somewhat. He sent an Ampex 600 series recorder to a company in Japan and asked what they would want to make a similar model. The results were the first Roberts recorder models, which were almost identical in appearance to the Ampex600's.


These early models were vacuum tube types. In order to build transistor models, the factory in Culver City was started. Only the tape transport mechanisms were purchased from the Japanese company, and everything else was manufactured at the Bowcroft Street plant, even the fabric-covered cases. This factory became quite versatile, having a couple of expert tool and die makers, large punch presses for metal fabrication, a printed-circuit manufacturing and assembly section and a cabinet shop. Facilities were also added to manufacture small transformers and coils in house.

"At some point Bob Metzner sold off his holdings. I don't know if that was before or after the Bowcroft Street plant was in full operation. The new organization had some very savvy management, and decided to branch into other areas where they could fully utilize the capabilities they already had. They were already into school AV equipment making record players using a variation of the old Metzner motor, and tape recorders using the Japanese tape transport. They bought Califone, a manufacturer of record players and other equipment primarily intended for square dance callers.


They manufactured record players under the Califone name. With the purchase of Califone they also acquired some patents for a language laboratory Califone had developed. They decided this kind of equipment would fit in with their general scheme and began to pursue this business. At this time, they had a good working relationship with Akai, the manufacturer of the tape transport mechanism. Akai had come out with some new transistor models on their own, and were marketing these in the US under both the Roberts name and their name.

"Meanwhile, Califone/Roberts realized that guitar amplifiers were well suited to being manufactured there, so they designed a few amplifiers and attempted to market them. They were not as successful in this pursuit as they had been with other products, because they had no one there who knew anything about the guitar amplifier market or what was really needed. At some point the existing Califone/Roberts operation was purchased by Rheem. I don't know any of the details of this, except now the company became Rheem/Califone/Roberts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheem

All the old staff were retained including the managers. A couple of new managers were added. One of the new managers claimed to know something about the music industry. He convinced the other managers that the new company should pursue the music business by making products under the Rheem name. They could start with the guitar amplifiers which were already in production.



Based on their success with importing, they could have other products made in Japan for distribution and sale by Rheem out of the Bowcroft St. facility. It was at this point that I became involved with Rheem/Califone/Roberts. I was hired by the Chief Engineer, not by management. I had been hired to design a new line of guitar amplifiers. I took on this job with a passion..."  " I got kind of a reputation as I had "pickers" coming and going into engineering to test concepts. My theory was that nobody knows better what they want in a product than the people that use them. Thus, the new Rheem guitar amps were really designed by guitarists - all I had to do was translate their language into engineering language. It wasn't easy but it sure was fun. :-)

Example: Translate into engineering criteria this sentence,

Quote"Hey dude you gots da twang OK but youse needs mo' funk."



The new manager of the Musical Instruments department naturally kept a close eye on what I was doing, and figured it was in his domain. He had a couple of Japanese companies build him samples of a "Combo Organ" he wanted to market, but what he received was far short of his expectations. He tried to involve me in the project, but the Chief Engineer would have none of it. We were almost finished with the guitar amplifier designs, which were quite radical, and he didn't want to see my efforts diverted. I was, however, very interested in the organ project, and wanted to get involved somehow. I had become friends with the General Manager of the company, who was a Radio Amateur and organ hobbyist. I had a talk with him about my dilemma, and he suggested I take the prototypes home and use the parts to construct something closer to what I and the Musical Instrument manager thought we wanted. He said Art, (The Chief Engineer.) couldn't object to this. Pitney, (The General Manager.) was also very interested in my ideas for future musical products, and said that if the first products were successful even slightly, it might open the way for some kind of research program. This was all I needed so after talking it over with the others involved, I took the three prototypes home and built what became the Rheem Mark VII organ.





I also showed them a prototype of a pedal bass instrument I had designed before I came there, intended to be placed under a piano. This design became the Kee Bass, though this was not what I intended.



Under the Rheem name, they also imported some guitars, which were not very good quality.

"The promised research program did materialize, and for about a year I had a free hand in the development of some new products, unhampered by the demands of either Management or Engineering. I brought in one of my friends and together we developed a new small portable organ that could be manufactured at the Rheem plant in the USA and still make a profit. We also developed a rhythm box whose design was later stolen, and an all electronic piano. There were many breakthrough ideas in all of these instruments, but unfortunately before they became reality Mr.. Pitney, the General Manager, was killed in a small plane crash. He had been the one that went to bat for the musical instrument development plan, and with him gone it just all fell apart.  Before I left, the whole operation had been sold again to a conglomerate called City Investing, and the Rheem name had been dropped.

Why do the Rheem organs resemble other Japanese organs, such as Ace Tone and Teisco?

"The actual manufacturer of the product for Rheem was Nakane Denki Co., which no longer exists. Nakane made all of the parts except the keyboards, which were made by Tahachiko, the same company that was making them for Yamaha at that time. (1966) Tahachiko no longer exists. Any resemblance of other organs to the Mark VII is probably coincidental. It could be, however, that when Rheem dropped out of the business, the same company in Japan made product using similar parts for someone else. This was not uncommon at the time. I don't know for a fact that this happened, but it is possible"

"The original prototype for the MK VII was made out of several samples that were submitted by several Japanese firms, but I do not know who they were. The original tone generator boards were apparently made by an independent company in Japan and used by several manufacturers. However, Nakane made all the boards in the MK VII including the generator boards. Since they were similar, I suspect they just copied the design they found in the prototype. A lot of this was going on in Japan at this time, so it wouldn't surprise me to find that pieces of the MK VII found their way into other Japanese products."

Also, see the Teisco page for some historical information linking Rheem to Teisco and Kawai.

Correspondence

In addition to the schematics and other marvelous information, Doug also provided me with a collection of actual letters sent between Rheem and the folks at Nakane.  I scanned them and you can download the whole collection by clicking here:  Rheem Correspondence  (it's a 4.3MB ZIP file)
http://www.combo-organ.com/Rheem/Correspondence.zip
I read all the letters and summarized each.  They're listed below in chronological order:

11-16-66:  Final specs sent to Nakane

11-22-66:  Nakane replies with a quote for one "set" (organ), with a projection for monthly production of 300 "sets"

12-13-66:  Telegram to Nakane specifying a signal-to-noise ratio greater than 60db.

12-26-66:  Letter from T Ogawa asking that delivery of samples for the "Baby Bass" be delayed

12-28-66:  Letter from Nakane advising that the first three samples of the Mark VII have been air-freighted on 12/26 and 12/27.  Some design difficulties, possible solutions and suggestions are discussed.

1-5-67:  Letter from Doug to Nakane specifying various technical changes and solutions to problems encountered.

1-12-67:  Letter from T. Suzuki to Doug responding to his technical changes.  He apologized for two of the sample organs being "lost" and eventually delivered late.  He also mentions a sample of the Kee Bass (at this time, it was called a "Baby Bass") having been sent.  This is the first mention of it.

3-4-67:  Letter from T. Suzuki to T. Tada about  the initial samples of the Kee Bass.  Noting that since the 1st 100 sets of Mark VII are finished, 2nd 200 are on the assembly line, he feels that some of their engineers have time to begin on the Kee Bass samples.

3-6-67: Letter from O.X. Pitney.  Design sample of Kee Bass to be completed 3/10, shipment to Japan on 3/15.

3-27-67: Letter from Doug with some engineering changes after delivery of the 1st batch of 100 Mark VII's.  He mentions a showing of the Mark VII at the Los Angeles Teen Fair, where everyone who played and heard the Mark VII preferred it to any other combo organ on the market at the time.

6-7-67:  Letter to Doug from T. Suzuki.  100 Kee Bass sets already in the warehouse, 200 more not packed yet.  Circuitry change recommended by Doug.  Scheduled to ship the 300 out on 6/15, but will delay if change is required on all 300.  Suzuki suggested changing tab wording for Percussion and Sustain to Perc and Sust

7-1-67: Letter from T. Suzuki to Doug about oscillator temperature compensation and drift in the Kee Bass

1-20-68: Letter from T. Suzuki to Doug acknowledging receipt of IC for use in production of a new 49-key organ.  He includes some mathematical formulae, analyzing the filter characteristics of the Mark VII.






Design Difficulties:

"There were a couple of problems that cropped up in production due to the specific components used. For example, the resistors used were a type where the connection to the ends was made by a couple of turns of wire. The resistors were then dipped in some kind of paint which was supposed to be a good insulator. In the tone generators, the resistors were packed tightly and flexing of the boards sometimes wore the paint off the ends of the resistors resulting in shorts. The electrolytic capacitors were not of high quality, and by now, probably most should be replaced. Lastly, the Japanese company failed to implement some of the circuitry that was on the original prototype, and there is excessive key pop on the top octave. Some key noise on audio keyed organs is unavoidable, but it can be improved on the Mark VII if one wants to go to the trouble."

Multi-Tone Booster

Farfisa Compacts were (and still are) famous for their Multi-Tone Booster.  Funny that the Mark VII had the same feature, eh?  Since the Mark VII was Japanese, and the Farfisa Italian, it's unlikely they were produced by the same company.  Could it be that a Multi-Tone is just a standard feature of many Combo Organs?  Nahhh, read on...

Following is what I (and Barry Carson) had originally written about this feature.  This will give you an idea of the thinking about it before we knew what it really did.  Turns out Barry's assessment was spot-on.

MY ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: The Multi-Tone booster is rather curious.  It adds a "boosted" version of the regular voices, similar to the Farfisa Compact, but not exactly.  The sound is much raspier than the regular voices (like the Farfisa) - so much so, that the "boosted" Flute voice sounds nothing like a standard Flute voice.  The booster also works in conjunction with the Volume pedal, in a manner of speaking.  As explained by the owners manual, the Volume pedal controls the volume of the regular voices, and the Multi-Tone Booster adds a boosted version of the voices, but at full volume.  Their suggestion is that after turning the booster on, you can use the Volume pedal like a Crescendo pedal, adding the regular organ sound in varying amounts.  Now, that's the impression I got reading the manual, and from my experience with a Mark VII which had NO volume pedal, and would ONLY make a sound with the Multi-Tone booster on.

BARRY'S ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION:"With the Tone tab off, the volume pedal controls the volume like usual and the organ has its full sound. With the Tone tab on, the pedal does not control the volume, it controls the tone of the organ. With the pedal all the way up, you get a thin sound, as you lower the pedal, the sound gets fuller or richer until, when the pedal is all the way down, you get the regular organ sound. So, here's a warning - if you have a Rheem without a volume pedal, you can get tricked into thinking you are getting the full sound by putting the tone tab 'on'. You are not - you are getting full volume, but not full tone, just the thinnest sound. At least, that is what mine does..."

NOW, THE REAL MULTI-TONE STORY (Straight from the horse's mouth):

"As I recall, one of the Italian combo organs [Doug was thinking, of course, of the Farfisa Compact line] had a tab of that name. Jerry, our Musical Division manager, edicted that the Mark VII should have a tab of the same name. I think the conversation went something like this:"

Jerry: "The XXX has this control on it called Multi Tone Boost and we don't. Can we add it?"
Doug: "What does it do?"
Jerry: "I don't know, is it important?"
Doug: "Well if it's a feature that's popular in the competition, yes, it's important."
Jerry: "We just need to have the control, it doesn't have to do the same thing."
Doug: "Well, what do you want it to do?"
Jerry: "I don't care as long as it does something."
Doug: "How much can I spend on it?"
Jerry: "You mean there's more than just the switch?"
Doug: "Probably."
Jerry: "OK, in addition to the switch - fifty cents."


"In the real world, conversations like this take place between sales departments and engineering departments more often than anyone would be comfortable believing. :-) So I wrangled a sample of the Italian XXX model, to see what the MTB tab did. It turned out it engaged a coupler that was operated by a knee lever. The effect was to bring in the higher octaves as the lever was advanced. Obviously I couldn't do this for fifty cents.

"So what I did was this: When the MTB tab is on, the high frequencies are routed around the expression pedal with a small capacitor. The sound is "thin." As you push the expression pedal down, the low frequencies are added to the mix. At full expression, it doesn't matter whether the MTB tab is on or off. This was all I could do with the funds allowed. It wasn't totally bogus, but it had limited usefulness."

So, there you have it!  A fifty-cent modification to appease the sales guy.  And you thought there was some complex and mysterious circuitry involved!

Here's a clip from the schematic:



"Exp" is the volume (expression) pedal.  The organ signal comes in from the left, goes through the volume pedal, and comes out the Main Output jack on the right.  The Multi-Tone tab just routes the higher frequencies (just like with speaker crossovers, a capacitor acts as a high-pass filter) directly to the jack.  With the volume pedal back, only the higher frequencies are sent to the output.  As the pedal is pushed forward, the lower frequencies are added.

http://www.combo-organ.com/Rheem/rheem.htm