New! Old! Whippany Electronics MELOSONIC 350 Combo Organ

Just scored this little retro curiosity for REAL CHEAP. I’m really excited for what I might end up doing with some of these old Combo Organs. Click on these images to enlarge.

It has a few issues and it will definitely need some TLC, but I’m very thankful for this awesome article on the “synthrepair” blog. Check it out for some great repair tips, and some decent shots of the organ’s innards.

Issues: the lowest E flat key is missing (I’ll probably never find a white one, so I think I might carve one out of hardwood or something). You can’t shut off the internal rhythm unit. There is a stuck note. Some keys are out of tune.

I also plan to take the hinges off of the keyboard lid so that it can actually be removed. Then the keyboard enclosure will become a good place for small keyboards and other gadgets. The Poly-800II seems to fit the space rather perfectly, but I could imagine some combo of a drum machine, the MS-20, the Microbrute, perhaps an fx pedal or two – this is actually the first self-standing keyboard I’ve ever owned and the possibilities excite me more than they would probably excite a normal person.

4 thoughts on “New! Old! Whippany Electronics MELOSONIC 350 Combo Organ”

How dumb of me: I had no idea the lid can be removed from its hinges by just sliding it to the right.

Awesome – cross off one invasive mod!

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To restore, or not to restore …

A few essential parts would be very hard to find. It could be fun to instead remove the rhythm unit and modify it for use as an analog percussion module, the rest of this cheezy organ bedamned.

Unfortunately, this organ is quite pretty, which perhaps means gutting it could be doing history a disservice. On the other hand, its “oscillator-per-three-notes” limitation makes it less than ideal to play, which leaves this organ with little purpose, other than being a curiosity among collectors and combo organ historians.

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