Vox Continental

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This emulates the original mark-1 Continental, popular in its time with the

Animals on 'House of the Rising Sun', Doors on 'Light my Fire' and most of

their other tracks. Manzarek did use Gibson later, and even played with the

Hammond on their final album, 'LA Woman' but this organ in part defined

the 60's sound and is still used by retro bands for that fact. The Damned

used it in an early revival where Captain Sensible punched the keyboard

wearing gloves to quite good effect. After that The Specials began the Mod/Ska

revival using one. The sharp and strong harmonic content has the ability to

cut into a mix and make its presence known.

The organ was a british design, eventually sold (to Crumar?) and made into a

number of plastic alternatives. Compared to the Hammond this was a fully

electronic instrument, no moving parts, and much simpler. It had a very

characteristic sound though, sharper and perhaps thinner but was far cheaper

than its larger cousin. It used a master oscillator that was divided down to

each harmonic for each key (as did the later Hammonds for price reasons). This

oscillator division design was used in the first of the polyphonic synthesisers

where the divided note was fead through individual envelope generators and

a shared or individual filter (Polymoog et al).

The Vox is also a drawbar instrument, but far simplified compared to the

Hammond. It has 4 harmonic mixes, 16', 8' and 4' drawbars each with eight

positions. The fourth gave a mix of 2 2/3, 2, 1 1/3 and 1 foot pipes.

An additional two drawbars controlled the overall volume and waveforms, one

for the flute or sine waves and another for the reed or ramp waves. The

resulting sound could be soft and warm (flute) or sharp and rich (reed).

There are two switches on the modulator panel, one for vibrato effect and one

for memories and options. Options give access to an chorus effect rather

than the simple vibrato, but this actually detracts from the qualities of the

sound which are otherwise very true to the original.

Vox is a trade name owned by Korg Inc. of Japan, and Continental is one of

their registered trademarks. Bristol does not intend to infringe upon these

registered names and Korg have their own remarkable range of vintage emulations

available. You are directed to their website for further information of true

Korg products.