Electone

Electone is the trademark used for electronic organs produced by Yamaha. With the exception of the top end performance models, most Electones are based on the design of the spinet electronic organ. Current models are completely digital and contain a variety of sounds, effects, and accompaniments, on top of the ability to store programming data onto memory devices.
After Hammond pioneered the electronic organ in the 1930s, other manufacturers began to market their own versions of the instrument. By the end of the 1950s, familiar brand names of home organs in addition to Hammond included Conn, Kimball, Lowrey, and others, while companies such as Allen and Rodgers manufactured large electronic organs designed for church and other public settings.
What would later become the Yamaha Electone emerged as a prototype concept in 1958, then named "E-T". The Electone series finally made its commercial debut in 1959 with the D-1, a home instrument. By 1980, with the market waning sharply, and some manufacturers ceasing production, the Electone line embraced digital technology. This allowed Electone's survival as the traditional home electronic organ market dried up. The product name "Electone", coined from the word "Electronic" and "Tone", would become so popular in Japan that in later years, it would become a way to refer to electronic organs in general in the country.
Electones built until 1983 were often similar in specifications to a small theatre organ, with a main flute group analogous to the Tibia Clausa, strings (usually at 8' and 4'), and multiple reeds at 16' and 8' pitches.
Starting with the D-3, Electones featured theatre organ-style color coding for the tone levers, which followed as: white for flutes and diapasons, red for reeds (brass and woodwinds), yellow for string voices (including piano and guitar), and green for percussion voices.
Unlike theatre organs however, the tone levers could be individually made louder, similar to a drawbar organ, and had 3 click positions, although they could be adjusted between them.
By the 1980s, many of the most famous names had ceased home production, but the Electone had successfully transitioned into the modern world of digital synthesizers .
The FE, and FX lines introduced in 1983, marked a transition from Theater organ styled instruments, with push buttons being used for selecting sounds, instead of tone levers, which would be carried over to future models and lines afterwards.
It would come to compete with new products from Moog Music, Wersi, and later Kurzweil. Electones were to be found not only in homes, especially in Japan and elsewhere in the East Asia, but also in bands and other solo and group public performances.
Yamaha began exporting Electones to the United States starting with the D-2B in 1967.
In 2004, Yamaha launched the STAGEA series. This series uses all AWM (Advanced Wave Memory) voices and features over 180 digital effects, built-in registration menus, VA (Virtual Acoustic) voices, and a Style-File compatible expanded rhythm and accompaniment section. AWM is the proprietary sound sampling technology of Yamaha.
Models in this series are:
ELS-01: The standard model
ELS-01C: The custom model, carrying the ability to use the VA voices, Pitch and Tempo Bends, After touch on the pedal keyboard, horizontal touch and after pitch, along with other features, and lastly,
ELS-01X: The professional model - taking the ELS-01C, it adds 61-note keyboards, a 25-note pedal board and XLR external audio jacks.
The STAGEA ELS-01 series was officially distributed only in Asian countries.
In 2006, Yamaha added the ELB-01 model to the lineup. This is a students' model, with 245 AWM voices and 133 accompaniment rhythms, but without voice or rhythm editing capabilities.
In 2008, Yamaha added The D-Deck (DDK-7 in some markets), which is the portable version of the ELS-01 with a more compact body, 61 keys on the lower keyboard and an optional pedalboard. The D-Deck comes with all the features of the ELS-01, with the additions also of Organ Flute voices and a second expression pedal.
In 2009, the STAGEA typeU series was launched, with only hardware differences between them and their original counterparts. The typeU version omitted the floppy drive UD-FD01 and the Smart-Media card slot.
In April 2014, Yamaha launched the STAGEA ELS-02 series. This series features Super Articulation voices, on top of over 900 AWM sounds, 96 VA voices, pedalboard polyphony, effects, and 566 accompaniment rhythms. The ELS-01, ELS-01C and ELS-01X can also be upgraded to the current series by the use of a "Vitalize" unit.
The STAGEA ELS-02 series currently has three models:
ELS-02: The standard model, with 506 AWM voices including Super Articulation voices, 506 accompaniment rhythms, and hundreds of audio effects.
ELS-02C: The custom model. Other than all the features of the ELS-02, it has an additional 60 AWM voices, VA voices, Organ Flutes voices (with digital drawbars), a second expression pedal, horizontal keyboard touch, and pedal board aftertouch.
ELS-02X: The professional model, which contains all the features of the ELS-02C but with both keyboards expanded to 61 keys and the pedalboard expanded to 25 full pedals.
Unlike the first STAGEA series, the STAGEA ELS-02 series is distributed in both Asia and Mexico.
In May 2016, the ELB-02 model was launched as a revamp of the ELB-01 model with more voices and rhythms added as well as the "after touch" feature on the upper and lower keyboards.
ELC-02: In 2016, Yamaha launched the STAGEA ELC-02. This model is a replacement for the STAGEA D-Deck (DDK-7), this model contains most of the features of the ELS-02 such as Super Articulation voices. Unlike the previous D-Deck model, the ELC-02 does not contain a 61 note lower keyboard instead a standard 49 note keyboard resides in its place. Existing owners of the D-Deck can upgrade the main unit to the ELC-02 and use their current stand, expression pedals and speakers as is.
In 2022, Yamaha launched a new Electone, the ELA-1. This model is not part of the STAGEA series, and is currently sold in China and Malaysia. This Electone shares the architecture of the Yamaha PSR SX600 portable keyboard and features 3 keyboards (upper, lower and bass pedals).
The International Electone Festival (IEF)/International Electone Concours (IEC) is an Electone Organ competition organized by Yamaha which has its beginnings in the 1960s. The first edition of the competition initiated in 1964 as a Japanese national contest to promote and market the Electone as a viable creative and professional musical outlet, and featured both the solo performer and the Electone instrument with no other accompaniment present - a format that lasts till this day. The first purposefully branded international edition complete with a broader roster of contestants representing countries such as USA, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, as well as European, Asian and South American countries, is noted as being held in October of 1971. However, as earlier as 1969 and 1970, a small number of international entrants were invited to compete at the 'Electone Concours Grand Prix' event against a predominantly Japanese contingent of competitors in Tokyo. The IEF finals from these early editions were then held in Japan every year until 1984 when it was held in Los Angeles to mirror the city's Olympic Games hosting duties. Afterwards, Yamaha began holding subsequent IEF finals in other cities around the world including Hamburg, Toronto, Paris, Hong Kong, Mexico and Singapore before returning to Japan.
Notable musicians who were invited to be part of the adjudication panel included Jerry Goldsmith, Raymond Lefèvre and Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Participants in the IEF finals had to be at least 16 years of age and competed for medal awards and cash prizes. On almost every occasion, there was one "Grand Prize" recipient who would receive a gold medal and cash prize which in its last years totalled $10,000US. Before 1982, a selection of participants were also presented with special Winner's prizes and the number of recipients of this award varied from year to year. After 1982, "Most Outstanding Performance" awards were presented to two (or in some instances three or four) participants who would receive a silver medal and cash prize, and "Outstanding Performance" awards were usually presented to three participants who would receive a bronze medal and cash prize. On rare occasions at IEF finals, a special President's award may also have been presented to one performer. Known as the "Kawakami Prize" it was named after renowned Yamaha Music Corporation President Genichi Kawakami and consisted of a special bronze medal and cash prize very similar to the "Outstanding Performance" award. By the mid to late 1990s Yamaha ceased to sponsor the event as the broader international competition it once was, keeping it a solely Japanese and Asian region contest by the turn of the new millennium. This change, which reflected the company's decision to decrease its global Electone market to these territories exclusively, continues to this day as the Yamaha Electone Concours .
International Electone Festival Finals
The Electone HX model appears briefly in the 1987 science fiction film The Running Man. When Ben Richards is in Amber's apartment (18 minutes into the film), he chases her around the Electone. Two scenes later (at the 20 minute mark), Richards, while standing over it, asks her what it is. Amber calls it her "synthesizer setup" and reveals that she wrote the ICS network jingle. (starting at 5:45 and 9:30 in this clip)