These weren't made for people with 'mad skills'. In fact, there's not a whole lot of skill involved in playing this. Left hand changes the chord, right hand plays the melody. Accompaniment matches the chords of the left hand.

The person playing this could be a very accomplished organist/pianist, though, but you really couldn't tell from this ... piece.

Five for the creepy lounge tune I completely forgot about.

I have one of these and the only thing he isn't playing is the actual bass line, and I'm pretty sure he's in the mode where the auto bass is modulated from the pedals, independent from the lower manual (which is what it follows in full accompaniment modes).

the thing to do with these is play with one of the more full featured looping pedals and use the sync-start mode to trigger fragments of the drum patterns into the looper and build up a kind of a Electone autoaccompaniment remix in real time. It has reasonably good options for mixxing patterns, too (you can have as many as half the beats playing at the same time, which gets weird fast).

The actual sound is basically a stripped down version of the keyboard Terry Riley uses - you don't have nearly as many drawbars (they look like switches, but they're actually continuously variable, not a lot of throw but definitely real drawbars) so the pallatte is much more limited, but you can definitely get some of the basic Shri Camel tones (minus the just intonation). Best purchase I've made since some guy sold me a '76 Ampeg b-15n in perfect shape for back around '02. I've even converted it into a portable with removable bass pedals and played out with it.

Of course I'm a shitty keyboardist, so I make full use of the more "weren't made for people with 'mad skills'" aspects of it.

I like the wood finish.

Oh and 'm wrong about him being in the pedal-controlled bass mode. I saw his leg moving but on second viewing he's just tapping his foot. I'd say he's a pretty competent player though.

The thing that I always find funny is that if you look at the high end organs they have all the auto accompaniment stuff, too. The top of the Electone line in the late 70s was about ,000 but it still had the ABC Rhythm Blocks buttons with their goofy, Fischer Price looking graphic.

Some day soon I should drop the to get schematics so I can add a midi clock output to it (or at least a sync pulse output that I can convert externally), that would really make it useful.

The wood finish is pretty great, this was the cheapest one so it's really ugly (even the next step up from this has real wood, at least a veneer) and mine has a plaque on it with the name of the guy in whose memory it was donated to a church on the South Shore back in 1987.

I love these things, Yamaha especially.

I love you, OZ. Never change.

The Electone A55 has mad skills.

I never will, Evilhomer. Unless the price is right.

me and my friend recorded a whole album on one of these... it was PREEEEETTTY GREAT.

I'd listen to that (hint hint).