Viscount DB-3, User Manual

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DB-3
Drawbar Organ
2. INTRODUCTION
commercial nature, at any time and without undertaking to update this publication
immediately.
•
All rights reserved; the reproduction of any part of this manual, in any form, without the
manufacturer’s specific written permission is forbidden.
•
Read all the information described carefully. You will avoid wasting time and will obtain
the best performance from your instrument.
•
The codes or numbers in square brackets ([]) indicate the names of the buttons, sliders
or trimmers on the instrument control panel.
For example, “[REVERB]” refers to the REVERB trimmer.
•
The illustrations and display pages are purely guideline and may differ from those
actually shown on the LCD.
In an electromagnetic organ, the sound is generated by 91 notched and 5 smooth wheels
turning close to a magnet with a winding.
The notches in the wheels (known as tonewheels) cause variations in the magnetic field,
which generate a voltage and therefore a signal which, controlled by the drawbars and
amplified, becomes sound.
But the tonewheels and the drawbars are not the only factors behind these organs’ special
sound; there are also many other ingredients, such as the click of the manual contacts,
the background noise due to the motor inside (needed to turn the tonewheels) and, last
but not last, the external rotary speaker which gives another special quality to the timbre.
These are just some of the characteristics of the electromagnetic organ, which has played
an important role in the history of music.
The Viscount DB-3 is able to simulate all these characteristics thanks to the new technology
known as A.S.T.M.
(Advanced Synchronous Tonewheel Modelling).
This new, innovative synthesising technology considers all the factors which affect the
sound of the original organs, such as the perfect synchronisation of the tonewheels, the
cabinet (including its size and the type of wood), the imperfections of the electrical circuits,
the motor noise, and so on.
Moreover, you will be able to achieve an almost perfect simulation (whatever people may
say, it is impossible to reproduce the exact sound of a real organ) of the combination of the
organ and speaker, thanks to the TONE CABINET EMULATION technology, which provides
an optimal reproduction of all the resonance characteristics of the cabinets used for this
special type of amplifier.
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