The instrument
The TX- 500 Tonewheel organ is built like the T-500 series, but has a more modern design with three round aluminum supports on both sides. It has a Ritme II with autochord and a cassette recorder.
Details
Electrical impulses of various frequencies are produced within a tone generator, containing a number of tone wheels driven at predetermined speeds by a synchronous motor and gear arrangement. Each phonic wheel is similar to a gear, with high and low teeth. As the wheel rotates these teeth pass near a permanent magnet, and the resulting variations in the magnetic field induce a voltage in a coil wound on the magnet. This small voltage, when suitably filtered, produces one note of the musical scale, its pitch or frequency depending on the number of teeth passing the magnet each second. A note of the organ, played on either manual or the pedal keyboard, generally consists of a fundamental pitch and a number of harmonics of the fundamental frequency. The notes available on each key are individually controllable by means of drawbars and preset keys.
The signals passes through the expression control and through the preamplifier, where vibrato is introduced, to the power amplifier and the self-contained speakers. Reverberation is added electrically by a second amplifier which drives a reverberation speaker, also located in the console.