From walterg@nauticom.net Thu Aug 14 08:21:38 2003
Subject:Allen B-3 clone!

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a classically trained organist, and was for a time an engineer with the Allen
Organ Company, the world's largest builder of church organs, and the manufacturer of the world's first commercially
available digital musical instruments. Allen was founded by Jerome Markowitz who was the other contender for title of
"Inventor of the electronic organ". The first Hammond preceeded the first Allen by just a few years, but whereas the
Hammond tone generator was electro-mechanical, the Allen tone generator of that era was based on Markowitz's stable
electronic oscillator. So it comes down to semantics and persnickety definitions if you really want to argue it -
which I don't. No matter how you split the hairs, Hammond came first.

Anyhow - whereas Jerome's overriding goal was always to duplicate the sound of the classical pipe organ, Hammond was
satisfied with just sort of barely suggesting it, and won out big in the home organ market. It always got JM's goat
that Hammond sold so many more pop/jazz/home organs, and he was always coming up with schemes to compete. So - fast
forward to last Tuesday. I had not been in the Allen factory for about 17 years, and stopped in to visit old
friends. While poking around their new museum, I spotted something that looked sort of like a B3. No drawbars, but
stop tabs at 16', 8', 5 1/3', etc, a console on turned legs, Hammond-style expression pedal linkage, and a 25-note
flat pedalboard, unlike the 32-note AGO pedals on most Allens. It was called a "Sheraton", and was built in the late
1950's. I'd never heard of it before. Has anyone here has ever seen or played one?

-WG