The curious case of the elusive Guild Electric Organ.

As many of you know I've been amassing a serious amount of Guild literature. One of the more unusual items I've come across is the Guild Electric Organ.

Let's start the story here with an October, 1 1968 price list.



We'll be discussing the first and last items listed. The middle two "Tel-Ray Organ Tones" we'll save for another day.

Here is a brochure for the Guild Electric Organ listed;



You can see that the description matches the price catalog.

Then on the back is the seperate "RotoVerb" unit;



I had a shot at a RotoVerb on ebay but was severely outbid when it went for like $350 or something!

Next, after some Google seaching I found this cool website called "Combo Organ Heaven" and low and behold they had a section on the Guild Electric Organ above. Not only that, but they make reference to the first Guild Electric Organ that has never appeared in a catalog! We'll get to that in a minute, in the meantime please click on the following link and go about halfway down the page.

Starmaster/Guild

Then as you saw at the bottom of they page they reference the "other" Guild Electric Organ. They saw an ad from September, 1968 for the organ. The ad I have is purportedly from June 1968.



As mentioned on the website it is an unusual set up with the voice tabs in front or beneath the keys. Being so unusual you think they would have been able to track the manufactor down. But alas, the mystery continues...

Easily the coolest looking organ I've ever seen.

8) Cool photos and adverts, and an intriguing tale to be told.

Seriously Grot worthy. 8)

So, was this a Fender/Guild thing happening back in the 60s?

Dave

dapmdave said:

So, was this a Fender/Guild thing happening back in the 60s?

Dave

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Explain, por favor. The only association I have that puts "Fender" and "keyboard" in the same sentence includes the iconic Fender Rhodes piano. Confused as to why you might link anything else discussed to Fender before 1970.

Well they were buying the same organ from an Italian manufacturer and they were having them "badged" Fender and Guild, but there was no direct connection between Fender and Guild. They just both sold the same organ!

The Guilds of Grot said:

Well they were buying the same organ from an Italian manufacturer and they were having them "badged" Fender and Guild, but there was no direct connection between Fender and Guild. They just both sold the same organ!

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Thank you. Somehow I missed that.

The Guilds of Grot said:

Well they were buying the same organ from an Italian manufacturer and they were having them "badged" Fender and Guild, but there was no direct connection between Fender and Guild. They just both sold the same organ!

Click to expand...

Would that be Farfisa, or someone else, Kurt? I gathered it's not Farfisa from the link you provided.

No. It's not a Fisa. It sounds a lot more like a Vox Continental. (That's good.)

Here are a couple of guys going crazy on a Fisa, a Whitehall, & a Fender Starmaster
that sounds completely different from the other two. I think it's the best-sounding of the 3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43JSzHplxM

You can really tell the difference between the Farfisa, a Whitehall & a Starmaster.
The Farfisa sound is closer to an accordion. The Starmaster sounds like more like
a Vox Conti organ.

The company that made the Starmasters for Fender & Guild was called 'Porto'.

Was the Rotoverb oilcan/Telray based too?

Walter Broes said:

Was the Rotoverb oilcan/Telray based too?

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Hi Walter; sort of like Guild, never say never with Tel-ray. This is the pic of the Rotoverb marcellis posted in the other thread:




The true oil-can devices had a rotating drum inside an oil-filled can. Boxy, bulky, and sold by Fender, Gibson and others as either a stand-alone unit or built-in to up-market amps. This is a pic of one of the last applications of the oil can unit; in a Morley oil can pedal. I had a (non-working) version but without the cool decoration ... they really take up space:




It's not clear that the real oil can system could have fit in either the rotoverb pedal or the organ with the rotoverb effect but it's possible that the oil-can effect was duplicated with transistors.

Some interesting Morley/Tel-Ray reading here.

Thanks Cap'n, I knew that, and the bulky size of the Guild "pedal" made me wonder whether there was an oilcan in it.