Unknown Parie Organ model

[onefortynine]

Hi all,

I suppose firstly I should introduce myself and then give some info on the organ.
I am a sound engineer and musician (drums, guitar) but cannot play piano or organ. However, I have signed myself up for adult lessons as it is always something I wanted to learn.
We have an old Parie organ in the shed that doesnt play anymore. It was bought for my older sister in the 80s but eventually got relegated to the shed in the mid 90s I think.
Recently, I decided to have a look at it and see if it is worth restoring - I have no intention of ever selling it as I am the kind of person that like to restore old things and keep them. Anyway, I can't imagine this organ will have much monetary value even if I do restore it. So my hope is that eventually it will have a place in my studio.

I don't have much info about the organ. I contacted Andy Baldassari from Parie for maybe some schematics and he replied with the following:

I don't have schematics because it's not an electromagnetic organ but an Electro-static one. I never used this instrument also because they produced it only for 1 year before developing the electromagnetic one.

Now I know very little about organs, so when he talks about electrostatic and electromagnetic I have no idea if this is good or bad. Can anyone shed some light (in basic english :-> ) about the differences?

Here is a photo of the organ - I hope this works as I have shared it from google+
Regards,
Niall.

[davidecasteel]

Do a web search on "pari.e organ" (yes, there is a period in the name).

flashguy

[andyg]

Electrostatic means basically bad in this case. No spares, nor schematics and no real info. Your photo is the first time I've seen a photo of one. It's a lot older than 1980s, Pari (without the E in those days) were already making electromagnetic organs in the early 1970s.

I think you'll be on your own for this one, but if we can help with some general advice, fire some questions at us. With luck you'll have a little bit of history sitting in your studio, quite possibly the only one still working. But, alas, that doesn't make it worth any more in money terms.

Let us know how you get on.

[onefortynine]

thanks Andy. yeah it could be an uphill battle but maybe worth it if it sounds decent when (if) restored. as you said, it could be a little bit of history sitting in my studio.
I'm guessing it is from the early 60s as the parie website suggests that is when electrostatic organs were replaced.
i also have a 97 year old upright piano in need of tlc so it could be an interesting/frustrating winter of projects :)
here is a photo of the rear of the organ -


- - - Updated - - -

oh I forgot to mention. I plugged it in recently and smoke poured out of that transformer on the left hand side (in front of the left speaker cone - as we look at it in the photo)..... so that wasn't good =-O

[indianajo]

Wow, transformers are expensive. And without schematics and a service manual, a transformer is one of the most mysterious devices once it is not working, to identify and replace. those silver things mounted on the transformer are the electrolytic capacitors that can quite likely short at >20 years. However, on an "electrostatic' organ, there also might be high voltages that could be shorted out by carbonized spiderwebs or rodent excrement. I like the 12" speakers, and the spinning discs could be interesting, but his organ hasn't been through the initial consumer driven checkout period and survived.

[onefortynine]

yes without a schematic I'm really at a loss here. the current owners at Pari don't have any more info about it either so it's a tough one. I'm not an electronic engineer so the insides to me just looks completely confusing :-(

[mashaffer]

Very interesting little organ. Is it designed essentially like the Wurlitzer eletrostatics?

mike

[Lucien Nunes]

Hi Niall

I have a similar electrostatic Parie in good working order. They are quite scarce now - I had to go to Holland to get mine as I could not find one in the UK. It came from Pieter de Jong who is an expert on the Parie and has both electrostatic and electromagnetic models. He and I are both electronic & audio engineers - I hope we can help you get yours working because it is worth saving for its rarity if nothing else - I would guess the number of survivors is in dozens rather than hundreds. The current Pari.E is made in Italy, because Anton Parie contracted out the manufacture of the electromagnetic organs. The electrostatic organ was made in his own factory, not Italy, which is why they don't have any info on your organ.

'Electrostatic' and 'electromagnetic' refer to the technology used in the tone generators. The later, electromagnetic Pari.E generator is electrically similar to a Hammond, using steel tonewheels to modulate the magnetic flux in pickup coils. By contrast, the earlier electrostatic generator has rotating aluminium cylinders energised with a high DC voltage. They have flats milled into them which pass by teeth inside aluminium pickup rings - as each flat goes past a tooth the capacitance between rotor and pickup ring varies and this induces an AC voltage on the pickup, which is fed to the key contacts. Unlike a Hammond where everything is low-impedance, an electrostatic organ uses very high impedances and hence different circuit designs, but in concept everything apart from the generators is at least similar, e.g. the scanner vibrato, drawbars, filters, reverb, amp etc.

I'll post some links to pics of my Parie and Pieter's. I would be interested to see some more pics of the inside of your organ. I'd recommend not powering it up again yet, until we have had a chance to study what is what and take steps to avoid anything getting damaged, as it has not been used for a long time. Small problems can become big ones when power is applied to aged parts without certain preliminary checks.

You might ask - what will it sound like once repaired? You can hear one on Pieter's website www.parie.nl and see some pics too - it is the organ that I got from him that is featured. I look forward to hearing and seeing more about yours... please could you also confirm where you are located?

Lucien

BTW Mike - unlike the Wurli which uses subtractive synthesis by filtering a complex wave from the reeds, the Parie uses additive synthesis via drawbars from the prime tones (which are not true sines) of the 72-note rotary generator. Because the generator outputs contain distinctive harmonic content, the Parie has quite a recognisable sound. It lacks the unlocked-phase advantage of the Wurli.

[Lucien Nunes]

I've uploaded some pics of mine to Flickr, try this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/1651472...7636130843975/

I only just noticed the bit about smoke coming from the transformer - seems my caution about powering up was slightly too late! Because the organ has not been used for a long time, certain capacitors will have failed and if power is applied before replacing them they can destroy the transformer. Proper testing needed to see whether it's salvageable.

Andy, I fear might end up quoting you out of context with your catchy description, when I have to explain a Melotone or something... 'electrostatic means basically bad' ;)
Luckily for the OP, not quite as bad as thought, since we have some info and knowledge on the Parie collectively.

Lucien

[mashaffer]

Ah, so it would be more akin to a Hammond.

mike

[andyg]

Lucien. I think you know that I know there's nothing wrong with an electrostatic organ as such, but my reply was intended thus:

Electromagnetic - good, there is some support available and other Pari and Pari.e owners out there.
Electrostatic - bad. You're on your own.

I fully expected this to be maybe the only one left, but I'm glad to find out that it isn't. :)

[davidecasteel]

Ah, so it would be more akin to a Hammond.

mike

That was my assumption from looking at the photo (drawbars). Both would appear to be tone synthesis by addition of harmonic sine waves.

David

[Anurae]

Sadly zero knowledge about those, but im curious if this thing can be brought back to life and how it sounds.

[onefortynine]

Hi Lucien,
thanks for all the info. your photos look great. looks like new :) I welcome any and all help/instruction in restoring the organ. I will be at home on Saturday (the organ is in my Dads garage) and I will take more photos then and we can go from there. I tried that website but the links don't seem to do anything other than open a popup.
Speak to you soon, and thanks again.

Oh, I'm in Ireland.

Niall.

[indianajo]

Clean all dirt off high voltage parts, particularly the circuit between the secondary winding of the transformer, to the high voltage rectifiers, to the filter caps, then on to the exciters and/or pickups on the electrostatic disks. I should tell you how many hours I spent cleaning high voltage igniter circuits to gas corn chip ovens on Sunday nights when they didn't start up the first time.
Don't touch high voltage circuits with the AC power on. Measure any metal you touch (for cleaning) at below 25 VDC before touching it. Read the safety thread, electrostatic could be particularly dangerous if the current isn't limited below 20 ma like a spark plug is.
Probably replace the High Voltage (rubber) wire, historic rubber is dirt. How long do the spark plug wires on a car before coil packs last? three years for rubber, 6 years for sililcon rubber? If squeaky clean cleanliness, and caps or diodes or wires that aren't shorted, doesn't stop the burning smell from the transformer (which should be fused on the primary, IMHO), then your best hope is to get Lucien Nunes to tell you what voltages his working transformer puts out. You can piece together a "new" transformer out of various modern ones at the various voltages the old one used to put out.
Detail on checking out transformer/rectifier/capacitor power supplies is in a trade school text "Electronic devices, the electron flow version" by Thomas Floyd. Or some similar trade school text from a school near you.