We've found a CL72: the Electrone that thinks it's a Hammond

[Lucien Nunes]

After years of head-scratching about what might be inside the elusive Compton 'Leisure' model with drawbars, with only the brochure pics and a few distant recollections to guide our thinking, Robert Cook succeeded in finding us a real live CL72. It's a fascinating development from 1968/9 that really breaks with tradition, as it is the one and only Electrone design that re-creates the sound and feel of a Hammond. Technically it is a unique hybrid of Compton's existing rotary electrostatic generators enhanced with electronic audio processing, adding new features and versatility to make it competitive with fully electronic organs of the period. I'll explain more about how it works once we've had a chance to study the circuits more thoroughly and research the background - having seen inside I have a hunch about who might have been the brains behind it.

In the meantime, although it still has many minor faults to fix, not least the customary dirty key contacts and resulting intermittent notes, we have got it playing reasonably well. I took a quick video of Peter trying out a classic Hammond-style registration: http://youtu.be/_Pmwk_HclJk

[Lucien Nunes]

And now for something slightly less different - the Cantata is here. This is another very late instrument which shares a few constructional features with the CL72 - plastic/metal manuals, silicon amplifier, increased use of PCBs, voicing resistors soldered in place. I would not mind betting that the same people were behind this revision of constructional method. More pics later, but in the meantime the most interesting feature on this model I think is the Sw-Gt coupler. Compton managed to dodge that one on all the direct keying models, e.g. 352, 357, CH/2, for most of the production span. But here, without introducing a relay action, they have managed to include a coupler. I can guess how it's done, with a duplicate set of Sw. voicing signals ,will investigate the voicing PCB to confirm. I have wondered in the past why they didn't do it earlier.

Compton Cantata prior to moving to EK.

cantata open.jpg (22.16 KiB) Viewed 28160 times