Over the years, I have serviced a number of older analog Viscount organs similar to this. This organ as it is labelled Domus, would have been built for the Dutch sales agent for Viscount. Probably explains why it has the flat pedalboard. The 1983 does sound plausible. Viscount did not go digital until 1987 or 1988.
I certainly would have no interest in it. These organs used cheap divider technology and simple formant filters. One does not buy these for the sound.
Typical problems with these are cold solder joints, poor connectors leading to poor performance, noisy pedalboard, poor quality poteniometers, leading to poor performance again.
Not one for my desirable list.
If you are interested, bid VERY LOW for it. Not worth more than a few hundred bucks on a good day.
Yes the organ is labelled "Melodie House - Bruxelles" so it is in the right area. The current owner noted that his schematics did mention Viscount and he has been resoldersing cold joints, replaced op-amps and has a small supply of tone-generator chips. He also says the pedals are clunky and need re-felting. The current price is $162 but I would have transport costs on top of that. I'll watch the auction and see how much it ramps up as I was considering using the organ as the basis of a midi-conversion (if its own tones are poor) as it is complete and appears presentable.
Out of interest, what is your desirable list ? I am also looking at some Hammond 920's and/or theatre organs such as a Baldwin Cinema II or Conn 640/650's.
Actually I thought this particular eBay auction is an excellent opportunity. There are plenty of small spinet organs on eBay, but very few full console organs, and fewer still with a full spread of 32 pedals.
This one looks excellent, and I'm watching with envy. It would be a risk-free purchase, PROVIDED that you're handy enough to implement a MIDI retrofit (Arduino, or similar), in my opinion.
I'd be calculating the cost of logistics myself, but not long purchased a Hammond Aurora-class unit, having only just managed to persuade my significant other to accept the monster into our nice living area.
I had a smaller 1970's spinet Viscount when I were a lad, and they featured a stack of silver-plated switch wires for every key. Although other switches and connectors were noisy, the switch wires never seemed to play-up.
Rob M
Just to round off this thread, my daughter and I are now the proud new owners of this Domus D80. The previous owner did a very good job of fixing up most of the issues, except for two manual 1 stops, which my daughter did not miss. She is quite happy practicing on this organ, and to my untrained ears, it sounds quite good for an old analoq. RobM was right, it is a very good and inexpensive home practice instrument for a classical organ student
Will try to fix up the pedals which are a bit noisy but tolerable when the organ played in louder volume. If anyone has any suggestions how to go about it and where to get the parts, it will be much appreciated.
Just to round off this thread, my daughter and I are now the proud new owners of this Domus D80. The previous owner did a very good job of fixing up most of the issues, except for two manual 1 stops, which my daughter did not miss. She is quite happy practicing on this organ, and to my untrained ears, it sounds quite good for an old analoq. RobM was right, it is a very good and inexpensive home practice instrument for a classical organ student
Will try to fix up the pedals which are a bit noisy but tolerable when the organ played in louder volume. If anyone has any suggestions how to go about it and where to get the parts, it will be much appreciated.
Two Sydney people in the one thread! I also live in Sydney, and am a jOrgan junkie......READ "developer". Send me PM's via this forum if you would like a hands-on introduction to jOrgan, which caters for both classic and theatre virtual organs, or even just chat on the phone. If you can visit, you will be astonished at the sounds.
Hi John, sorry for the late reply for I did not check this forum frequently. Will check out Jorgan when I get some free time during the Christmas break.
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