You own what now?

I've been playing the organ since 1986, and since that time I've owned remarkably few different instruments, especially considering the progress that electronic musical instruments made in the 80s and 90s.

Here are details, in chronological order, of all the equipment that I've owned - and in may cases, still own!

Technically speaking, it started before this. After becoming transfixed watching an organist named Howard Vernon performing at Halesowen Conservative Club one Saturday evening, and then getting a chance to try my uncle's Hammond a few days later, my parents booked me in to organ lessons with Joyce Bailey at Pied Piper Music in Halesowen.

Thus began my ten-year association with the shop. But that's another story.

This was October 1986, and because I'd been doing very well (learning a tune a week) I was rewarded with the Bontempi for Christmas.

As organs go, it was basic but surprisingly pleasent to play. If my memory serves me correctly, it featured eight sounds, eight rhythms, vibrato and sustain effects and had two 37-note keyboards.

Soon we added the optional 13-note pedalboard and expression pedal to complete the instrument.

The best feature of the Bontempi was its portability. The legs screwed on to the unit with just four screws, and there was even an integrated carrying handle which slid out from just beneath the lower keyboard!

I'd been using a brand new Yamaha ME-10 in my lessons, and wanted one of those. However, my organ teacher vetoed that idea, suggesting that I wouldn't get enough scope for progression from an ME-10 and recommending an ME-50 instead - although the fact that there was a good £300 price difference between the two and that she also owned the shop may have had something to do with that!

So I proudly took delivery of an ME-50 at around Easter time in 1987. The little ME was wonderfully portable (I took it to school on a number of occasions), but it's speakers were pathetic. Therefore we soon added a pair of KA-10s from Yamaha. These were designed specifically with the ME-series in mind, as they fixed to the bar under the keyboard at the rear and hung in place.

To boost the drums, we next added an RX-21 drum machine. And further taking advantage of the fact that the ME-50 had MIDI, an FB-01 FM tone module.

But soon I outgrew that, and in common with pretty much every other semi-pro or professional organist, it was time for...

The HS-8 was still new, and I'm not going to talk about it in detail here; try my other site here for full details of this fantastic organ.

As was the norm, the first addition to this was a disk drive - the MDR-3. This was followed by the CVS-10 "Combination Voice Expander"... in other words, digital drawbars.

Initially I was using the KA-10s with this, but the HS-8 had a much fuller and more powerful sound than the ME-50, so I needed some kind of proper PA system...

This is a multi-track cassette recorder, but because it's also a four-channel mixer with a 10-band graphic EQ I used it as my mixing device right up until the purchase of my current Roland VM-3100.

My current mixer. More details on my current setup page.

This pair of powered speakers from Carlsbro were designed specifically for keyboards (hence the "K" in the model name). They pumped out 65W each, which was enough for all the work I was doing up until I started in earnest on the dance scene.

After gigging with the Carlsbros at Aquarius, Hednesford without a problem, I went to my second gig at Goodyear, Wolverhampton.

About half-way through the first half I noticed a slight distortion coming from one of the speakers. You couldn't hear it off the stage so I took no notice. After the gig I realised that the baffle board (the part of the unit that holds the actual speaker in place) had broken. And because I was off to St Leonards, Stafford, the next month, I knew I needed a new pair of speakers. Those were to be my current Mackies.

My current speakers. More details on my current setup page.

To supplement the sound of the HS-8 I decided to add a keyboard.

Working in a music shop had lead me to be very impressed by the new Roland E-20 keyboard. But I was advised to hold out for the E-30 - the same price, but better.

It was an excellent keyboard, but was fairly poor compared to what followed it...

I first heard the E-70 at the Midlands Music Fair in Telford. It was vastly superior to the E-30, and I aquired one the following Christmas.

Now I finally had an instrument that I could perform with other than the HS-8, and the E-70 on its own was used by me on many occasions when a full organ wasn't required.

To streamline the set-up required to perform at smaller functions, and to aid the creation of multi-part arrangements, a second keyboard seemed ideal.

Not the most well-known of keyboards, you can find out all about it at my other site here.

With the SQ and the E-70 I could perform for any function without the need for the HS-8. But for dancing I still preferred the flexibility that an organ layout (two keyboards and a pedal board) offered.

I was now performing on the dance circuit with the HS-8, E-70 and SQ-16. But before I became a "regular", there was one more upgrade to perform...

The EM-2000 was bought to enable me to move away from the traditional organ to a two keyboard and pedalboard setup.

However, it simply replaced the E-70 in my existing setup! I still use this on the road. More details on my current setup page.

My current main keyboard, this finally allowed me to retire the venerable HS-8.

Initially I'd looked at possible moving to a Yamaha EL-900 (too cumbersome - heftier and larger than the HS-8, and I was trying to streamline my setup) or a portable organ from Wersi (too esoteric - and I wouldn't trust an organ running on Windows 98! From what my friend Cameron Lloyd tells me, the Wersi Louvre currently residing at Blackpool Tower Ballroom is almost universally disliked. And that's on the rare occasions when it's working)!

No, I needed something smaller, and the 9000Pro is now the main keyboard in my current setup. More details are here.