Farfisa Compact Duo

I stole the above photo from here This is a real monster from years past! What an organ - sold as a portable but then by today's standard perhaps the phrase is luggable. It's quite heavy and bulky to handle - relatively difficult single handed but not too hard to assemble.

The dark red and pale green squares are tabs they add the pipe lengths, note the lower keyboard... an octave of reversed keys, then an octave of grey keys then the normal set up. This is neat because the black keys are bass notes and depending upon a tab setting the grey keys can be either an extension of the bass keys or an extension of the normal white keys, the distinction being indicated by the small red lamps shown between the two manuals.

The dangly thing under the lower keyboard at top C is the knee lever. This device seems quite obscure, you have to know how to kick it in. It works in conjuction with the green tabs on the upper manual only. The Booster tab must be off, when moving the tone boost lever to the right it brightens the sound. It seem that it takes the tone to that when the booster tab is pressed.

The organ is in two parts, the organ itself and a remote box housing the reverb and power supply. My unit came without the additional box, foot pedals or swell pedal and I had to make a power supply. I don't miss the reverb - it probably would have got replaced anyway. It seems like the power supply is the main problem with these organs, as in non existent.

Notable users- Clint Boon of the Inspirel Carpets, Elvis Costello, I think John Lennon (I have a photo of him with a single manual version), Question Mark and the Mysterians with their hit from the 60's entitled 96 Tears, Ray Manzerk of The Doors and Rick Wright of Pink Floyd (thanks to Mike Cornett).

So What's It Like?

Rather primitive in construction, wood and metal bits loosely held together by a few screws. Remove the top cover, which you will have to do sooner or later and you will see a mass of wires and circuit boards. The wiring is free to wiggle at will and so will eventually drop off.
Take a look down the back at where the keys operate electric switches and you will see a whole lot more things that will want to drop off.

Putting the key levers (lifters) back in place requires full access to the internals which is done by lifting the organ from its case where you find a host of technological wonders. Sure it's a transistor organ - but these must have been from the first batch of transistors ever made! The circuit boards are mounted into wooden pigeon boxes - wires strewn all over the place. Not an impressive construction - but then typical of the time.

So How Does It Sound

Squeeky, thrashy I think the phrase is cheesy. An acquired taste. It requires a certain playing style in order to bring out the best in the sounds. Forget playing rock music - a Hammond it ain't! But for up-beat pop songs it sounds quite good, of course its real use is for surf music. The singular bass sound is quite good.

Do I gig It?

When looking under the hood I would suggest not - Clint Boon did gig his quite regularly but remember that he probably had his own keyboard technician. Originally it was sold as a portable organ but because of it's construction doing repairs can be very time consuming - if a wire fell off finding it's reconnection place can be very difficult. I wonder how many Compact Duos have been unintentionally modified.

The output signal level is quite low making it susceptible to noise, indeed the bleed over from the oscillators is quite noticeable - plus I would expect that with light dimmers buzzing away on stage, so too will the Farfisa.
One time at rehearsals I remember the guitarist could pick up the most wonderful ethereal sci-fi type sounds just by getting close to the organ.

Do I Want One

Maybe, but only if you know exactly what you are getting. Don't expect the organ to be fully functional - there will be keys or organ tabs that don't work properly, wires broken off etc.
I did contact a specialist keyboard supplier here in England, the information I was given about the power supply, high fault factor and how time consuming they are to repair was accurate. However I was stunned at how much they were asking, however justified due to the commercial aspects demanded of such a retailer.

Having now been made aware of the cost I've done some samples for the Ensoniq EPS16+ which I suggest is the better way of getting the Farfisa Compact Duo sound. Go see www.esqbase.de and look under organ, Farfisa.

For more information about this and similar organs go check out my net pal Robert at Combo Organ where you will find many very interesting things about these organs. Including a real circuit diagram of the power supply!!

Being something of a technical wizz... I'm now something of an expert on fixing these beasts!