Estey Patriot

[Spurgeasaurus Rex]

Hi everyone, I'm new around here. Glad to be here!

I have a question regarding an Estey Organ I just purchased at a thrift store. It's called "Patriot". It works perfectly, except the keys need to be transposed up by a full step. I have been searching around the net for the manual to no avail. There is a cartridge slot with no cartridge, sadly, and I don't know if I need it in order to transpose it. When I press the transpose button and play keys, I get these weird glitchy overtones. Anyone have experience with these?

Thank You

-TJ

[andyg]

It's not an Estey organ as such. Estey is a historic US organ builder that disappeared long ago. I think it was Fletchers that bought up a container-load or two of Italian organs back in the 80's and slapped the Estey name on to make them sound more 'home grown' for the US market. Nothing new in that, US manufacturers were doing that back in the 70's.

So I think your Estey is more likely to be an Orla. A photo would let us ID if for sure and then you have a shot at getting the right manual. It will have a transpose function somewhere on it, perhaps 'hidden' in a menu screen under 'Functions'. If you can find that function, then that's solved the problem. Alternatively, there will be a 'factory reset' procedure that usually involves holding some keys or buttons while you power up, and that will reset the transposer.

The cartridge slot is most likely to add extra rhythm style cartridges to the organ. It won't affect the organ's other features in any way.

[Spurgeasaurus Rex]

some pics




Thanks for the quick reply! Here are a few pics. I figured that there would be some sort of hidden function for it, but I was basically SOL without the manual. Great organ.

[andyg]

Definitely an Orla. Typo in my post, I meant 1990's rather than 1980's. One of the family that included organs like the Mantova, only the buttons and the name badge have been changed. Fletchers desperately needed a decent low cost organ to complement the increasingly expensive Lowrey range. As Orla had built some of the previous Lowrey range anyway, that was the obvious door for them to knock on.

Over at the right hand side there's a button marked Transpose, so that feature will be connected with that button in some way. Try pressing it until the light next to Transpose lights up. Then check the LED display on the left hand cheek block. If there are + and - buttons under it, use them to get the display to read either zero or C. Sometimes pressing both + and - together does the trick.

You could send the photo of the organ to the folks at Orla Direct in the UK or to Orla Italy, they might be able to sell you an owner's manual for that model.

[Spurgeasaurus Rex]

Thanks Andy! It looks like I will have to send them the photo. I'm really looking forward to getting this working properly. Cheers!

[Spurgeasaurus Rex]

Got it! I had to simply hold down the three lowest keys on the lower manual. Thanks again.